Miguel Abensour

Against the Sovereignty of

Philosophy over Politics:
Arendt's Reading of
Plato's Cave Allegory

HANNAH ARENDT IS CELEBRATED AS ONE OF THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS

of our time. But is such a celebration truly legitimate? Indeed, as
surprising and as paradoxical as it may seem, Hannah Arendt has
always demonstrated a strong opposition to political philosophy and
to its tradition of thought. Despite almost unanimous recognition of
Arendt, the idiom "political philosophy"—and the institutions that
are born of it—are highly problematic. For the author of The Human
Condition, under the guise of a supposedly happy alliance between the
substantive and the qualifier, "political philosophy" willingly conceals
a conflict between philosophy and poUtics and bears the threat of the
sovereignty of one over the other. This conflict is extremely profound
since it represents opposition not only between two academic disci-
plines but between two modes of existence that seek to establish a hier-
archy—excellence being attributed to one of them, in this case, the bios
theoretlkos at the expense of the bios poliUcos.
Little surprise, then, that a philosopher critical of the concept
of sovereignty attacks the general configuration of political philoso-
phy. Indeed, Arendt is aware of the necessity of rejecting the model
of competence in the political realm in order to better recognize the
inherent political capacity of all; her resolve is to struggle against the

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government of philosophers, of "those who know over those who do
not know." In order to fully comprehend the "contra political philoso-
phy" that Arendt puts forth, what better vantage point than that of her
critical interpretation of Plato's thought? Did the author of the Republic
not edify or institute political philosophy away from and even against
the polis?
In a letter dated May 8,1954, in which she attempts to explain to
Heidegger the broad outline of her work, Arendt writes.

Starting with the parable of the cave (and your interpreta-

tion of it), a representation of the traditional relationship
between philosophy and politics, [we see] actually the atti-
tude of Plato and Aristotle toward the polis as the basis of
all political theories. (It seems to me decisive that Plato
makes the agathm [the good] the highest idea—and not the
kalon [the beautiful]—for political reasons) (Hannah Arendt-
Martin Heidegger letter, 1925-1975).

Two years later, July 1, 1956, in a letter to Karl Jaspers, Arendt once
again speaks of Plato's position:

It seems to me that in the Republic Plato wanted to "apply"

his own theory of ideas to politics, even though that theory
had very different origins. Heidegger, it seems to me, is
particulariy off base in using the cave simile to interpret
and "criticize" Plato's theory of ideas, but he is right when
he says that in the presentation of the cave simile, truth is
transformed on the sly into correctness and, consequently,
ideas into standards (Arendt and Jaspers, 1992: 288).

From these letters, three essential points can be drawn:

• The importance of the allegory of the cave, which is the heart of

Plato's political philosophy. Arendt also adds the importance of

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 Heidegger's interpretation in "Plato's Doctrine of Truth." Here we
must admit that Arendt expresses a reserve concerning Heidegger's
attempt to interpret the Theory of Forms via the cave allegory
(Heidegger, 1998:155-182).
• The hypothesis that Plato, in the Republic, sought to apply his Theory
of Forms to politics, even if this theory is of a different origin, inas-
much as its aim is to answer the philosophical question of the truth
rather than the political question of the organization of the city. It
is during this problematic apphcation that Plato reahzes the no less
problematic passage from the idea of Beauty to the idea of Good.
• The hypothesis of the passage from the idea of Beauty to the idea of
Good is confirmed by Heidegger's interpretation, which insists on
the ambiguity of the platonic concept of the essence of truth, that
would experience a transformation of the truth as "non-voilement
de I'etant" to the truth as exactitude of view, a transformation from
aletheia to omoiosis.

By making the allegory of the cave the central aspect of Plato's politi-
cal philosophy, is Arendt not articulating a most profound critique
of the idea of political philosophy, a superior form of critique, the
general principal of which is expressed in a fragment of the intro-
duction to the Politics: "Plato, the father of political philosophy in
the West, attempted in various ways to oppose the polis and what it
understood by freedom by positing a political theory in which politi-
cal standards were derived not from politics but from philosophy"
(Arendt, 2005: 130-131). From this stems a domination of reason over
politics that, following Arendt, had a decisive effect on the destiny of
political philosophy in the Western world. "Quelque chose defondamen-
talement faux" writes Arendt about political philosophy in the Journal
de pensee.
And so what is the Arendtian interpretation of the cave allegoiy?
How can we define its uniqueness? Even if it rests upon the strong certi-
tude that the allegory represents the heart of Plato's political philoso-
phy, this interpretation unfurls in many different directions. Beyond

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 957

this multiplicity, we frnd one overriding issue: Plato's acceptance or
rejection of political philosophy.
This interpretation of the cave allegory gives Arendt the oppor-
tunity to highlight Plato's ambivalence toward human affairs and also
to respond to Pascal with a "yes, but." It is true that Plato does not
give great philosophical importance to the political realm and that he
thought that we should not take it very seriously. It is nevertheless true
that, contrary to almost all of the philosophers that followed him, Plato
"still took human affairs so seriously that he changed the very center
of his thought to make it applicable to politics" (Arendt, 1961: 113).
Pascal's Thought 331 (Pascal, 1968) only expresses half of the truth.
Admittedly, we can compare Plato's cave to Pascal's insane asylum, but
Plato's intervention aims at something more than the simple re-estab-
lishment of order by the psychiatrist (medecin alieniste). His desire to put
an end to the anomie that ravages the ship of fools (nefdesfous) is trans-
formed into a quest for the best regime. This, in turn, gives birth to
a well-administered and well-ordered city. Hence, Plato modifies the
most proper philosophical elaboration, the theory of Forms, in order
for it to serve his project. This ambivalence constitutes the fabric of the
cave allegory. Does it not hold to the ambiguity of the philosopher who,
following the paradox of the membership and the withdrawal, belongs
and does not belong to the city, finding himself both outside and inside
its walls?

THE ARENDTIAN READING AS A POLITICAL READING

Arendt deliberately and immediately turns her interpretation to the
philosopher. For Arendt, as for Heidegger, the allegory tells a story:
it gives an account of the path from the cave to the light of day and,
inversely, from the light of day to the darkness of the cave. The man
liberated from his chains, an uncertain figure for Heidegger, is the
philosopher and the cave allegory presents "a concentrated biogra-
phy" of him in three steps, three turning points the whole of which
represents a conversion of human beings in their totality, the forma-
tion of the philosopher, or, in Heideggerian terms, "leading the whole

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human being in the turning around of his or her essence" (Heidegger,
1998: 166). In the initial phase, the ftiture philosopher freely turns in
the cave and discovers behind him an artificial fire that permits him to
see things as they are in their reality. For Arendt, this first attitude is
that of the learned who seeks to know things as they are in themselves,
without taking into account the opinions of the multitude. Indeed, the
shadows and images that stream on the screen fixated by the prisoners
of the cave would be their opinions (doxai).
Unsatisfied with the light of the fire, the philosopher, "this soli-
tary adventurer," discovers an exit that leads, by stairway, to the open
sky, to a new area: the kingdom of Ideas or Forms, the eternal essence
of perishable and changing things, illuminated by the sun, the Ideas of
ideas or the Super Good. Here is the peak of the life of the philosopher,
but here also begins his tragedy. Because he is mortal, the philosopher
cannot remain indefinitely in the sky of pure Ideas. He must go back
dovm into the cave among his companions of misfortune. However,
this return to his origins is not a return home. It becomes an ordeal of
a strange malaise. In this third stage, the philosopher appears to be a
laughable figure to those who surround him. Worse, he is in danger. His
ascension to the kingdom of Ideas makes him lose his sense of orienta-
tion in the cave; he nurtures very dangerous ideas that oblige him to
contradict the obvious facts of common sense.
This is a sketch that rests on an obvious simplification of the
platonic allegory. For example, the essential problem of the relation-
ship to the line that divides the interpreters is not dealt with. Nothing
is said regarding the identity of those who exhibit the figurines behind
the walls. Even if Arendt, following Heidegger, insists on the optical and
orientation problems that accompany each of the passages recounted
in the myth—that is, the discovery of the artificial fire, the exit from
the cave, the ascent back to the cave—at no point does Arendt (and
here she differs from Heidegger) consider the fundamental question
of paideia. Arendt attributes the orientation problems to the difference
between philosophy and common sense, insofar as it is truly a ques-
tion of common sense between the prisoners of the cave. It distinctly

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 9S9

appears that Arendt's simplification, due to the focus put on the person
of the philosopher, corresponds undoubtedly to a volition to insist on
the political context of the cave allegory and on the central question
of the myth, which is to say the relationship of the philosopher to
the polis, the relationship of philosophy and politics, all of which are
dimensions wrongly ignored by Heidegger.
In his political dialogues, but mainly in the Republic, does Plato
not work at inventing a concept of authority lacking in Greek thought
and history? Does he not seek to introduce a new relation in the public
life of the polis that would be akin to a third way, inasmuch as it would
keep at an equal distance both persuasion, deemed insufficient after the
death of Socrates, and the external violence that is deemed to be destmc-
tive of politics itself? How can we manage to obligate humans to obey
without having recourse to violence? What new form of legitimacy can
be created? It is in this direction that, following Arendt, Plato discovers
that truth or evident truths are liable to exert the type of constraint on
the minds of men and that this constraint, "though it needs no violence
to be effective, is stronger than persuasion and violence" (Arendt, 1961:
107-108). The analysis of the cave allegory cannot ignore the political
context that the quest for a new form of legitimacy arrives at, that is
to say the government of reason, "d la coerdtion par la raison," in such a
fashion that the government of the city ends up under the authority
of philosophers, of those who, thanks to their exit fi-om the cave, were
able to have access to a reality of a superior order through the contem-
plation of Forms. It is with regard to the superiority of this order that
we can apply the theory of Forms to politics. This corresponds to Plato's
"absolutist" phase of the theory of Forms "that beheves that there is a
true science of things in general and of human things in particular and
that consequently it is up to the bearer of this science to decide and
regulate the government of human things" (Castoriadis, 1999: 52). In
this organization, the cave allegory is directed to the few who are able
to obey in freedom whereas the myth of the rewards and punishments
after death is directed to the many, the multitude. It is through the
invention of a relationship where the element of constraint "lies in the

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relationship itself" on the model of the doctor-patient or master-slave
relationship that Plato is able to accomplish his design to "establish the
"authority" of the philosopher over the polis" (Arendt, 1961:109).
In this sense, the cave allegory, vwth its division between the sky
of pure ideas that the philosopher can access and human existence in
the cave immersed in illusions, in the fascinated vision of shadows and
images, designates ideas as the instruments that can precisely create
this freedom-oriented authority or obedience relationship. Still, Plato
must greatly modify the doctrine of Ideas in order to attain this goal.
The political context of the cave allegory is crucial since it symbolizes
the confiict opened between the philosopher and the polis. Arendt, in
different texts, never ceases to return to this point by indicating the
perspective from which we must interpret the cave allegory. In this
sense, the Republic is first and foremost a treaty of political philosophy,
because in Plato's mind political philosophy is the adequate response to
this conflict. But another question emerges: If the cave allegory repre-
sents the heart of the Republic as the institution of political philosophy,
is Plato's solution the correct one with regard to the confiict between
philosophy and polis? That philosophy becomes "political" or the politi-
cal realm specifies the substantive or object "philosophy" does not entail
that it respects the logic of the polis. Perhaps this project of "political
philosophy" amounts to the creation of a new nexus: a set of philosoph-
ical-political authorities that threatened to violate the polis and were
liable to harm the experience of isonomy Mdthin the polis in such a way
as to put an end to it. To answer this question, we must return to the
specificities of the Arendtian analysis of the cave allegory.
For Arendt, the cave described in the allegory is a social space
distinguished by an absence of politics. FoUov^dng Plato's description,
the prisoners are chained is such a way that they are forced to keep
their heads immobile. They therefore cannot see themselves or others
but only shadows. All conversations are forbidden. The only "shadow"
of an exchange possible is a competition or rivalry about the shadows
and images that are projected on the walls of the cave: Who vwU better
distinguish the passing shadows and images? Who vwU remember the

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 961

proper order of appearance? Who will be able to accurately predict the
shadows to come? (Plato: 516 c-d) Moreover, Arendt takes pleasure in
pointing out the lack of politics in the subterranean and prison-like
universe of the cave. In "Philosophy and Politics," she writes:

It belongs to the puzzling aspects of the allegory of the

cave that Plato depicts its inhabitants as frozen, chained
before a screen, vdthout any possibihty of doing anything
or communicating with one another. Indeed, the two poht-
ically most significant words designating human activity,
talk and action (lexis and praxis), are conspicuously absent
from the whole story (Arendt, 1990: 96).

But it is not enough for Arendt to point out this lack of pohtics; she wdll
dig deeper by bringing into play her critical analysis of the conditions
of possibility of politics. The cave suffers from an absence of politics
because its inhabitants, whether they be the philosopher back from
the sky of pure ideas or the prisoners still there, give excessive value to
seeing, preferring seeing over acting.
Similarly, in "What is Authority?" we find the same observation
of an absence of political conditions in the platonic cave (Arendt, 1961:
108-109). Whereas the hfe of the multitude is characterized by lexis, by
speech and by praxis, by action, it is not the case for the inhabitants
of the cave.^ They have for sole occupation to see and, more impor-
tant, this regardless of all practical needs. A new teleological concep-
tion emerges: humans can realize their nature insomuch as they are
seeing and not acting beings, pure sight and not actus purus. From this
necessarily results a depreciation of the domain of human affairs, of
the three dimensions of vita artiva and, more specifically, of all that
concerns speech and action. If all humans share the same passion for
seeing, the interest of the philosopher and that of humans as such coin-
cide. Both "require that human affairs, the result of speech and action,
do not aquire their own dignity, but that they be submitted to the domi-
nation of something else" Such is the result of a philosophy that gives

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preference to the most spiritual of the five senses, that is built upon
an "an absolute priority of seeing over acting, of contemplation over
speech and action," of bios theoretikos over bios politikos, of a philosophy
animated by "a fundamental conviction that what makes things human
is the need to see." Moreover, this philosophy that gives precedence to
the need to see over the "need for politics" (Feuerbach) consequently
justifies the intervention of the philosopher and the government of the
philosopher-king. Is the philosopher not the "great seer," the one who
can purely see since he has seen the Forms that are of a superior nature
and permit the true perception of all things? The stage is now set for
the domain of human affairs, ontologically depreciated, to fall under
the domination of something exterior that, as such, acquires the legiti-
macy needed to rule. All is now in place for politics to fall under the
domination of philosophy. Arendt writes in conclusion:

The allegory of the cave is thus designed to depict not so

much how philosophy looks from the viewpoint of poli-
tics but how politics, the realm of human affairs, looks
from the viewpoint of philosophy. And the purpose is to
discover in the realm of philosophy those standards which
are appropriate for a city of cave dwellers, to be sure, but
still for inhabitants who, albeit darkly and ignorantly, have
formed their opinions concerning the same matters as the
philosopher (Arendt, 1990: 96).

The second specificity of Arendt's interpretation is that,

following Heidegger's example, she considers that the last stage of
the narration, when the philosopher must return to the cave, is of
great importance. Heidegger will even anticipate a battle within the
cave between the liberator and the prisoners opposed to all forms of
liberation.
As we have observed, Arendt will evoke a similar scenario, even
if it is in different terms. The one she calls the philosopher who goes
back to the cave is ill at ease since he is received as a ridiculous, even

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 963

dangerous figure who seeks to attack the evidences of common sense.
As such, he is seen as someone who could shatter the order within the
cave. Once again, Arendt Unks this trying situation of the philosopher
to his ambivalence. The return to the cave, with the complications that
it entails, is one of the possible figures of the paradox of the appearance
and retreat. If the philosopher were only a philosopher, his adventure
would end with his exit fi-om the cave and the contemplation of the
Forms, the highest truth. The philosopher is a mixed being, however.
A great part of him partakes in the commonly shared humanity: he
is "a man among men, a mortal among mortals, and a citizen among
citizens" (Arendt, 1961: 114). But the philosopher also feels obligated
to communicate the truth that his exit fi-om the cave has revealed to
him. He feels the need to establish for the cave dwellers a codification
or a regulation of the whole of society. At the same time, the philoso-
pher acquires, thanks to the authority conferred by his access to truth,
a newfound legitimacy that permits him to take charge of human
affairs, to present himself as a philosopher-king. If the philosopher's
mission and ambition are to take charge of human affairs, of politics, it
is inasmuch as he has discovered—and it is a discovery—that the Forms
contemplated outside the cave are applicable, through transformation,
vdthin the cave. In Plato's approach, following Arendt, the return to
the cave is therefore closely related to the applicability of the Forms and
to their usefulness in the political realm. In The Human Condition, Arendt
writes:

It is only when he returns to the dark cave of human affairs

to live once more vdth his fellow men that he needs the
ideas for guidance as standards and rules by which to
measure and under which to subsume the varied multitude
of human deeds and words with the same absolute, 'objec-
tive' certainty with which the craftsmen can be guided in
making and the layman in judging individual beds by using
the unwavering ever-present model, the 'idea' of bed in
general (Arendt, 1958: 226).

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 Before examining the operations that Plato must undertake to
make his doctrine of Forms applicable to politics, let us attempt to
propose a tentative response to the question at hand: are the institution
of political philosophy and the subsequent creation of philosophical-
political authorities an appropriate response to the apparent conflict
between philosophy and the polis?

IS THE PLATONIC INSTITUTION OF POLITICAL

PHILOSOPHY A GOOD SOLUTION?
We can legitimately doubt that this solution is satisfactory inasmuch
as the cave allegory is a main source of the dichotomy between those
who, thanks to their retreat from the cave, have vision and tmth and
those who remain prisoners of relationships that exist in the cave and
are hostage to the illusions that dominate the human condition. This
dichotomy necessarily engenders, under the name "political philoso-
phy," a nexus of philosophical-political authorities whose existence is
a negation of the isonomical structure of the polis, of the equality in
principle of citizens that is reinforced by philia, a negation of the city's
immanent rationahty. Indeed, is the end result of this institution not
the creation of a commandment and obedience relationship, taken
from a nonpolitical model, and that rests upon the hierarchy between
the theoretical life (bios theoretikos) and the political hfe (bios politikon)?
But eyen more disturbing, to use Arendt's expression, is the underlying
assumption that the institution of political philosophy rests upon this
amounts to a defeat and a subjection of the polis.
If we are to judge by the cave allegory that symbolizes the human
condition, the philosopher, a seer, actually suffers from a strange type
of blindness: he sees nothing precisely where there is something to
see. This blindness is somewhat akin the blindness of classical political
anthropology, which saw an absence of the state in primitive societies
when it should have seen, as Pierre Clastres has shown, a complex social
organisation directed "against the state." Arendt, in her analysis of the
cave allegory, correctly insisted on the fact that, in his representation
of the human condition, Plato ignores all that can encourage the birth

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 965

of politics, the conditions of possibility of politics, speech, and action.
It is therefore from an apolitical human condition, or even an unpo-
litical human condition that Plato bases his project of political philoso-
phy, whch is thereby greatly mortgaged because of this absence. The
philosopher, after having contemplated the Forms and the Super Good,
reenters the cave in order to codify the behavior of its inhabitants and
submit them to norms outside the cave. Following Arendt, the unsaid
[I'impMte] of platonic political philosophy is doubly problematic: on
the one hand, it rests upon a primary absence of politics by proposing
an apolitical vision of the human condition reduced to a purely social
condition; on the other, it is because of this initial lack of politics that
the political philosophy must have recourse to a set of exterior norms.
There is a necessary link between this degree zero of politics and the
exterior nature of the norms. It is because of this absence of politics
that the philosopher turns outward, toward philosophy, to impose new
criteria on human affairs. The reader will easily agree that a vision of
the human condition that allows, at the outset, the conditions of the
possibility of politics, speech, and action, could only give rise to a differ-
ent type of political philosophy. If politics is always already there, if it
is coeval wdth the human condition, political philosophy would seek to
demonstrate how speech and action contain within themselves, in the
inherent logic of their unfolding, the possibility of immanently institut-
ing a political bond, of unveiling the fragile network of human relations.
Quite obviously, such a political philosophy would be diametrically
opposed to a political philosophy that attempts to impose from the
exterior, that is from itself, norms that would wrest the human condi-
tion from its supposedly nonpolitical character and reach, through the
mediation of philosophy, to a particular form of politics from above.
The debt that, through the allegory of the cave, burdens platonic
political philosophy is all the more heavy because the inhabitants of the
cave are prisoners in chains and vwthout freedom. Even those without
chains, who regain their freedom to move, still do not know true free-
dom. This situation reinforces the apolitical condition of the inhabit-
ants of the cave and keeps them well away from politics, whose reason

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 for being is, as we all know, freedom. What does it mean to think the
"invention of pohtics" well away from freedom?
To answer more thoroughly the question, we should turn to the
operations undertaken by Plato; notably, to the movement that made
the doctrine of Forms applicable to the political realm, a doctrine that
was not destined for such an application. As we have noted, this appli-
cation could only occur through a series of transformations. We can
enumerate three that are closely linked.
First, the transformation of the original fiinction of the Forms.
It is only during the third stage of this trajectory, the return to the
cave, that the philosopher, at the mercy of the obscurity and the latent
hostility of his companions, attempts to liberate them despite their
resistance. It is at this point that he changes the way of understand-
ing the truth as it appears outside of the cave. Why not transform this
outside truth into norms applicable to human conduct in the cave,
norms that would permit measuring and regulating this conduct? Here
Arendt is correcting, with the help of Heidegger, Jaeger's interpreta-
tion in Paideia; while it is true that Plato's philosophy produces an art
of measuring, this art only appears vwth the political philosophy of
the Republic and cannot define the totality of his work. At this level, an
antinomy appears between two concepts of the Forms: the Forms as
true essences that must be contemplated and the Forms as measures
that must be apphed. It is between these two conceptions of the Forms
that the transformation of their original function vwU play out, when
the forms are transferred from the philosophical to the pohtical realm.
In order to bring to light this antinomy, Arendt will explicitly have
recourse to the Heideggerian interpretation of the cave allegory found
in "Plato's Doctrine of the Truth."^
For Heidegger, the true object of the allegory is a presentation of
the essence of truth, or of Plato's doctrine of truth. Proof of this can be
found in the distinction between the four different areas in the allegory
and the passage from one to another that occurs by way of the question
of the truth, altetheia, or nonveihng in Heidegger's terms, preoccupied
as he is with giving hfe to the Greek concept of the essence of truth.

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 967

Each area corresponds to a "dominant mode of truth" and the trajec-
tory of the cave allegory retraced the passage from one mode of truth
to another. Thus from Heidegger's interpretation emerges, even if it
does not explicitly say so, a first ambiguity in Book VII of the Republic:
Is it concerned with the essence of the formation or the essence of the
truth? A second ambiguity is articulated by Heidegger in these terms:

For this reason there is a necessary ambiguity in Plato's

doctrine. This is precisely what attests to the heretofore
unsaid but now sayable change in the essence of truth.
The ambiguity is quite clearly manifested in the fact
that whereas aletheia [nonveiling] is what is named and
discussed, it is ortholes [exactitude of seeing or even exac-
titude of perception and language] that is meant and that
is posited as normative—and all this in a single train of
thought (Heidegger: 1998:177).

Hence, the ambiguity is found in the reliance upon the changing

essence of the truth. It is precisely its fruit. What then is this transfor-
mation of the essence of the truth? It is preceded by a transformation of
the nonveiling when access to the nonveiled takes place thanks to the
luminosity of the Form, and more specifically the Form of the Good—of
which Plato writes, in this decisive passage of Book VI of the Republic,
about seeing, the act of seeing, and that which binds them: "Thus what
provides unhiddenness to the thing known and also gives the power (of
knowing) to the knower, this, I say, is the idea of the good" (Book VI,
508 e as quoted in Heidegger, 1998: 173-174). From here the displace-
ment to vision, to the gaze that looks up to the Form: "Whoever wants
to act and has to act in a world determined by 'the ideas' needs, before
all else, a view of the ideas," judges Heidegger (Heidegger, 1998: 176).
We could therefore think that the change in the essence of the truth
intervened—much as, during the transformation of the nonveiling,
the Form triumphs over the truth. It is through an analysis of the idea
of the Good that Heidegger manages to bring forth the intermediary

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link that allows understanding of the ambiguity of Plato's doctrine; it
is nothing else but the victory of Form over truth. Reljdng on a decisive
passage (517 c)—the idea of Good "is the mistress who bestows unhid-
denness as well as apprehension"—Heidegger draws an argument from
the sovereignty of the Form of the Good in order to put forth an event
that Plato does not mention: the fact that the idea gains the upper hand
over aletheia. "Aletheia"—^vwites Heidegger—"comes under the yoke of
the Idea. When Plato says of the Idea that she is the mistress that allows
for unhiddenness, he points to something unsaid, namely, that hence-
forth the essence of truth does not, as the essence of unhiddenness,
unfold from its proper and essential friUness but rather shifrs to the
essence of the Idea. The essence of truth gives up its frmdamental trait
of unhiddenness (Heidegger, 1998:176).
It is in this abandonment that resides the source of the ambigu-
ity denounced by Heidegger. At the moment when what counts, in our
relationship to things, is the idein of the idea, the seeing of the Form—
"lasaisie de Te-vidence'parle regard"—the task at hand is to make possible
such a vision in a manner that seeing and knowledge become correct.
In the cave allegory,

the movement of passage from one place to the other

consists in the process whereby the gaze becomes more
correct. Everj^hing depends on the orthotes, the correctness
of the gaze What results from this conforming of appre-
hension, as an idein, to the idea, an agreement of the act
of knowing vwth the thing itself Thus, the priority of idea
and of idein over aletheia results in a transformation in the
essence of truth. Truth becomes orthotes, the correctness of
apprehension and asserting (Heidegger, 1998:177).

Arendt's development is certainly less complex and subtle. It is

as if she was hastily seeking to arrive at the heart of the matter in her
eyes—that is, the political question. Arendt certainly recognizes her
debt to Heidegger, notably in the unveiling of the ambiguity regarding

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 969

the essence of the truth. Notwithstanding this acknowledgement of her
debt, Arendt does not assume the denunciation of this ambiguity per
se and does not invite us to cross the same landscape. The scene that
she builds is different and without doubt results from a voluntary and
justifiable simplification of Heidegger's undertaking since she does not
seek to recover that same experience.
The opposition is no longer found between truth and Form;
opposition that ends with a victory of the former over the latter that
entails an ambiguity regarding the conception of the essence of truth.
Rather, Arendt seeks to turn to the result of the change in the concep-
tion of the essence of truth in order to harvest the effects of this ambi-
guity and in order for the opposition to find itself within the Form, a
sort of internal opposition or, better yet, immanent to the Form. The
conflict also intervenes between the Form as a speculative contem-
plation of the essences and the Form as an art of measurement. For
Arendt, the transformation undertaken by Plato to institute political
philosophy derives precisely from a modification of the functions of Forms.
It is no longer Form that triumphs over truth but it is the function of
measurement of the Form that triumphs over its function of contem-
plation of the essences. Hence, in Arendt's text, the ambiguity is
displaced since it now concerns the doctrine of the Forms and not that
of the truth, even if we can easily imagine a passage from one ambigu-
ity to another. The Form as an art of measure is not inconsistent with
the truth understood as precision of sight. This preferred function of
measure allows for, at the third stage, that of the return to the cave,
the consideration of the applicability of the Forms to the realm of
human affairs, to politics. It is because the Forms are liable to give
birth to an art of measurement that the philosopher can conceive of
their applicability to the realm of politics. But this applicability does
not go without saying, since it inevitably entails violent effects. In this
perspective, is politics not thought and "treated" with a logic that is
not its ovra, a logic that is exterior, the logic of the Forms as authori-
ties needed to guide human affairs? It is as if politics was vacuity, a
void that the imposition of the Forms would seek to fill, or a chaos

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that the impririt or the hold of Forms would suppress by substituting
an intelligible form.
Applicability and change in the function of the Forms go
together. Following Arendt, the ambiguity between the Form as true
essence that must be contemplated and Form as an art of measurement
is surmounted, in the cave allegory, inasmuch as the Forms are consid-
ered as possible measures of human conduct. The Forms, because of
their transcendent nature—the sky of Ideas—in their relationship to
human affairs, can serve as measure of the more or less suitabihty, the
more or less correctness of concrete human behavior vnth regards to
the Form of Good (defined as the measure of all things). Regarding this
matter, Arendt compares the Form to the master benchmark that, in
its invariable and abstract nature, permits to measure a multitude of
concrete objects. In a similar fashion, the Forms allow us to take the
measure of a multitude of concrete situations. The Form is a measuring
instrument that is so capable as to permit the subsuming of a multiplic-
ity of objects by reducing the other to the same and by including the
same in a rule that apphes to all. It is at the end of these two operations
that the Form, as an instrument of measure, transforms itself into a
norm destined to regulate human behavior and hence permit to appre-
ciate the conformity of acts and judgments. It is up to the philosopher
to judge, in function of the Form, if society remains in a state of anomie
or if it falls under the grip of a Nomos. The normativity that is exerted
from outside of the social, the sky of Ideas, can thus be considered as
an instrument of domination in the hands of philosophers. Arendt also
strongly insists on the transformation, on the unforeseen change in
function, of the new role given to the Forms.
It is as if Plato, such a philosopher returning to the cave, in the face
of the confiict between philosophy and pohs had discovered a new field
in which to apply his doctrine of Forms and the unsuspected efficiency
of the Forms in this field. When the philosopher leaves the cave in his
quest for the true essence of Being, he nurtures no "second thought to
the practical applicability of what he is going to find" (Arendt, 1961:
112) contends Arendt. That is why she seeks to reinforce the qualitative

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 971

gap between the Forms and the political realm, in order to better high-
light Plato's strange design that offers the Forms a new fate.

For the original function of the ideas was not to rule or

otherwise determine the chaos of human affairs, but, in
'shining brightness,' to illuminate their darkness. As such,
the ideas have nothing whatsoever to do with politics,
political experience, and the problem of action, but pertain
exclusively to philosophy, the experience of contemplation,
and the quest for the 'true being of things.' It is precisely
ruling, measuring, subsuming, and regulating that are
entirely alien to the experiences underljdng the doctrine of
ideas in its original conception (Arendt, 1961:112-113).

At the origin of the platonic institution of political philosophy is a trans-

fer of the Forms from the philosophical realm to the political realm and
a gamble on the relevance of the Forms and their possible contribu-
tion to a theory of politics. If Hannah Arendt does not cover the same
ground as Heidegger, does her reading not invite us to question the
parallel nature of both situations, on the one hand, the victory of Form
over truth and, on the other hand, the subjection of politics to Forms?
Second, this change in orientation of the function of the Forms
can only be accomplished at the price of a second operation, the
displacement of the Form of Beauty to the Form of Good with regard
to the determination of the Form of all forms, the Supreme Form. It is
precisely this displacement, this assignment of the good as Supreme
Form that Arendt observes in The Human Condition and in the essay
"What is Authority?" "When Plato was not concerned with political
philosophy (as in the Symposium and elsewhere), he describes the ideas
as what 'shines forth most' (ekphanestaton) and therefore as variations
of the beautiful. Only in the Republic were the ideas transformed into
standards, measurements, and rules of behavior, all of which are varia-
tions or derivations of the idea of the 'good' in the Greek sense of the
word, that is, of the 'good for' or 'of fitness'" (Arendt, 1958: 225-226).

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Yet we must still make clear that Arendt's remark operates within
the framework of the philosopher-king or the king-philosopher, the
famous h)^othesis contained in Book V of the Republic that envisages
the chance encounter, vydthin the same person, between political power
and philosophy. To these conditions Arendt adds that the Good must be
chosen as supreme Form: "The good is the highest idea of the philoso-
pher-king, who wishes to be the ruler of human aflFairs because he must
spend his life among men and cannot dwell forever under the sky of
ideas" (Arendt, 1958: 226). The hypothesis confirmed, Arendt takes the
time to note that the philosopher—and only the philosopher is as yet
defined, even in the Republic as a lover of beauty and not of good—only
the philosopher-king, anxious to apply the Forms to human affairs, can
bring about the displacement from Beauty to Good since only the Form
of Good contains an art of measurement and thus applicability.
It is in light of the antinomy between two types of Forms revealed
by Arendt—the Forms as true essences that must be contemplated
and the Forms as measures that must be applied—that we can under-
stand the displacement of the Form of Beauty to the Form of Good.
This displacement, in certain ways, reproduces this antinomy but also
resolves it in favor of the Form of Good inasmuch as the Form of Beauty
is more aligned with contemplation and that of Good with application.
In the Banquet, love as eros is praised because its object is beauty. The
highest idea is that of Beauty since it leads to the truth. The dialogue
describes, notably the discussion between Diotime and Socrates, "le
voste ocean du beau" and the degrees of initiation that leads to the sudden
revelation of what is beauty itself alone, that is, the essence of beauty,
beauty as an intelligible form. The Form of Beauty is presented as the
supreme idea or form because if the essence of the idea is to shine, to
bring its luminance, beauty is that which shines the most and illumi-
nates all the rest. Hence the movement in the Banquet that stages the
erotic ascension of the soul to attain the contemplation of beauty itself,
that which pariicipates in the beauty of things. But, for Arendt, it is only
within the political context of the Republic that the twofold operation
of repudiation of the idea of the beauty occurs, at least for the philos-

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 973

opher-king, and the choice of the Good as Supreme Form. However,
while the Form of Beauty leads to the contemplation of being, to the
nonveiling of being due to an ascending movement, the Form of Good
generates a double movement, a rise toward the contemplation of the
Supreme Form and a descent back to human affairs to which it is neces-
sary to apply the measure of all things, that is to say, the Form of Good,
"good" {agathon) meaning in Greek, "good for," "apt at," "adequate to."
Also Arendt is able to conclude, because of the affinity she perceives
between the Form of Good and utility:

If the highest idea, in which all other ideas must partake in

order to be ideas at all, is that of fitness, then the ideas are
applicable by definition, and in the hands of the philoso-
pher, the expert in ideas, they can become rules and stan-
dards or, as later in the laws, they can become laws (Arendt,
1961:113).

In a certain sense, we can be all the more amazed by Plato's oper-

ation that, as Arendt points out, he was in all likelihood attached to the
constant ideal of kalon and of agathon, of good and beauty. But, in the
Republic, pressed by the "need for absolutist politics," he breaks with
this ideal in order to retain only the agathon by unseating the kalon.
This displacement becomes all the more important because it
ends up being the displacement of an experience, the transition from
one t5^e of experience to another. The Form of Good substitutes itself
to that of Beauty when the philosopher turns away from the original
philosophical experience, the quest for the contemplation of the truth,
understood as nonveiling, in order to consider the scene of human
affairs and a different type of experience that is political. The displace-
ment of the Form of Beauty by the Form of Good accompanies the trans-
fer of the philosopher's attention to the philosophical experience of
aletheia to the political experience or to that of praxis. For Arendt, Plato's
coup or stroke of genius is to have been the first (its seems) to conceive
and to open a new field of relevance for the theory of Forms and, at the

974 social research

same time, imprint the torsion necessary in order to extract a political
philosophy: "Plato's Doctrine of Truth" clears the way [travaille en aeux]
for Arendt's text to the point of even clarifying the process itself—the
transition from the Form of Beauty to the Form of Good—beyond its
apparent simplicity. Of course, Arendt can rightly blame Heidegger for
ignoring the political context of the Republic, and notably the displace-
ment of Book VI. But her debt is perhaps more important than she is
prepared to admit. Indeed, is not the complexity of Heidegger's analysis
better equipped to understand the conditions of possibility, even of the
internal mechanism of the substitution of the Form of Good over the
Form of Beauty? We must remember that in order to clarify the transi-
tion from a certain notion of the essence of truth to another—that is,
the passage from aletheia to orthotes—Heidegger gives rise to a middle
link that is the victory of the Form over the truth that follows the trans-
formation of the nonveiled, when access to the nonveiled occurs thanks
to the luminosity of the Form, notably the Form of Good. It follows that
the essence of the truth is no longer deployed from its own plenitude
that another essence of truth seeks to supplant the nonveiling and that,
in the end, "the essence of truth gives up its fundamental trait of unhid-
denness" (Heidegger, 1998:176).
Third, beyond the resolve to transform the theory of Forms,
originally unfamiliar with all political preoccupations, into a necessary
application to politics, Plato's political philosophy is distinguished by a
substitution of action by fabrication, of action by work.
Let us return to our initial question: does the institution of polit-
ical philosophy, with all the complex detours that it entails, notably
the detour by the cave allegory, bring a satisfactory solution to the
conflict between philosophy and the polis, between philosophy and
politics? The issue at stake in this question is all the more important
since, following Arendt, the platonic solution is the basis of all political
theory in the Western world. As we said earlier, we are dealing vdth a
most profound critique of the idea of political philosophy. We have also
already observed that, tentatively at least, Plato's solution, which takes
the form of political philosophy, is highly problematic. If, in effect.

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 975

Plato reaches his goal by devising a new form of authority unknown to
the Greek world, he imposes, with the institution of pohtical philoso-
phy, a new nexus, a set of philosophical-political authorities capable of
destroying the isonomic and egalitarian logic of the polis, to do violence
to the immanent rationality of the city.
Even worse, this political philosophy is based on an implicit
postulate, notably through the cave allegory: a social state at risk to
illusion and confrision, an apolitical human condition or reduced to a
degree zero of politics that ends up, because it ignores the characteris-
tics of action and the creativity of praxis, codifying human society with
transcendental norms brought dov^m from the sky of ideas and that
derive their legitimacy from philosophy and that aim at estabhshing a
government of philosophers, experts in ideas, in order to place the city
under the yoke of philosophy. It follows a disastrous or impoverishing
reduction of the political question; it is no longer a question of letting
a political bond or relationship come to be through concerted action. It is
now only a question of a well-administered city, a city on which must
be imposed an order that finds its support elsewhere, in the sky of ideas.
The city, instead of being thought of positively as the birth of a rela-
tionship between free humans, is only seen negatively as the advisable
suppression of a state of anomy and chaos.
But the update of the three operations imdertaken by Plato to make
the theory of Forms applicable to the pohtical reahn obliges Arendt to go
even further in her critique. It is no longer sufficient to measure the effects
of the philosopher's authority over the pohs; she must judge political
philosophy as an institution and also the essence of pohtical philosophy.

THE ESSENCE OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Our interest in Arendt's position has to do with her breaking
strength {force de rupture). She clearly breaks with the dominant concep-
tion of political philosophy that understands it as a manifestation or a
doctrine of freedom in that she teaches how to distinguish, by furnish-
ing criteria ofjudgment, the free political regime from the tyrannical or
despotic political regime: in our times, between democracy and totali-

976 social research

tarianism. For Arendt, however, political philosophy, far from being
essentially a child bom of freedom, would, surprisingly enough, be tied
to domination; from its birth, it is a theory of domination. "The Platonic
separation of knowing and doing has remained at the root of all theo-
ries of domination, which are not mere justifrcations of an irreducible
and irresponsible will to power" (Arendt, 1958: 225).^ Of course, Plato
teaches the distinction between a free political regime and tyranny; he
nevertheless demonstrates a certain attraction to t5n-anny. Also, to the
t3^e of happy conscience that pleads, without nuance, today more than
before! for a "restoration" of political philosophy, Arendt opposes an
insurmountable worry (inquietude) that pushes her to emancipate our
minds from tradition; she even goes so far as to directly attack the insti-
tution that gave birth to this tradition.
In this sense, her struggle meets that of Gomelius Gastoriadis.
Gontrary to Arendt, he sought to ascribe the birth of political philosophy,
not to the condemnation of Socrates, but to the defeat ofAthenian democ-
racy.'' Notwithstanding this divergence, his harsh diagnosis of political
philosophy meets that of Arendt's. "Plato's ontology," writes Gastoriadis,

and his political philosophy rest upon . . . the conceal-

ment and the closure of the political question. With Plato
begins something else: a political philosophy which is no
longer political thought, because it is immediately missing
the question. . . . Its condition of possibility is indeed an
unawareness of the fundamental fact that defrnes the possi-
bility of political thought: the self-institution of society. The
self-instituting activity of the poHs exphcitly erupted in the
face of the world for three centuries. Plato's philosophy is
possible only with the blocking out of this experience—
blocking out conditioned by what is considered to be its
failure" (Gastoriadis, 2004: 288; also 274).

"Overturn Platonism" could be Arendt's commandment. In her

case, to overturn Platonism means, first of all and essentially, to reject

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 977

the cave allegory and all political philosophy that considers Plato's fiction
as a founding myth with the disastrous consequences that it entails. The
question is to put an end to the paradox of a political philosophy that is
created solely to compensate for an absence of politics and that is blind to
the existence of a political bond; a political philosophy that is motivated
by the desire to create or to fabricate an order that, through the command-
ment and obedience relationship, creates a bond missing among humans.
Further, it entails an opposition to Plato's modifications of the theory of
Forms and the most important of all modifications: the substitution of the
Form of Beauty by the Form of Good. Here, it is necessary to denounce the
surreptitious metamorphosis of the truth into accvu'acy, from aletheia to
orthotes, that has conferred to philosophy and to philosophers sovereignty,
a new power to guide from which emanate norms and rules destined to
order and to control human conduct. In this sense, do we not deprive poli-
tics of all relationship to truth, to the nonveiling, since politics now only
has to do with exactitude and convenience?
Finally, overturning Platonism implies fully accepting the
fragility of human things and the resistance to the desire to confer
on them the solidity of fabricated objects, of work. We must also
refuse the platonic analogy between the Form and the practice of
the artisan that builds a bed or a table following a model that, in
his mind, preexists fabrication. Overturning Platonism demands
the rejection of the idea of a model, the rejection of the willingness
to substitute fabrication for action and thus breaking with the idea
that the mission of political action is to apply a preliminary theory.
Overturning Platonism entails a return to human praxis, the full
power of unveiling, to trust the "political capacity" of humans by
relying on the inventiveness and on the creativity of the "all ones"
("tous uns"). Is this not a way to put an end to a twofold forgetfulness,
that of being and that of action?

CONCLUSION
At the end of this trajectory, we can clearly see the distinctiveness of
Arendt's gesture: she invites us to break with political philosophy and

978 social research

its tradition since this tradition is situated closer to a theory of domina-
tion than to a theory of freedom. When confronted with the imposing,
and seemingly without shadow, corpus of political philosophy, Arendt
gave birth to a nagging doubt: Given its platonic origins, does political
philosophy oflFer the possibility of reflecting upon freedom or does it
seek, inversely, to submit freedom and its exercise to the authority of a
group of experts in Forms, the philosophers, that will give to the expan-
sion of freedom only what philosophy deems appropriate for the city?
It is from this type of critical, heteredox questioning that Arendt invites
us to take our distance with political philosophy, to submit it without
respite and remorse to the question instead of naively adhering to it, as
if the legitimacy of political philosophy was beyond debate, and went
without saying. This is why it is necessary, following Arendt, to refuse,
in terms of politics, the status of an expert in ideas, that is to say, the
status of philosopher. Arendt's gesture is indeed distinctive. The order
to "overturn Platonism" is only half of the invitation. In fact, it is not
simply a call to liquidate once and for all political philosophy in the
name of opposing the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition in order to install
in its place a positivistic—or not—theory of politics.
Hannah Arendt, "a sort of phenomenologist," is concerned with
the return to political things themselves, beyond all psychologism,
beyond all sociologism, but also beyond all "philosophicalism"—politi-
cal philosophy tends so much to strangle politics and ends up obscuring
praxis. And she practices a twofold approach. Indeed, her resolutely crit-
ical examination of political philosophy is permanently accompanied
by an in-depth interrogation on the chances of onother political philosophy
that would, instead of projecting over action and imposing its laws on
it, be able to give free range to praxis and let itself be guided without
restraint by its reason for being which is freedom, far from all transac-
tional or strategic compromise with any theory of domination. Hence,
the interpretation of Arendt's critical gesture must be concerned with
the necessity of going beyond the critique, to the turning that she invites
us to take, in order to open the more or less explored realm of a politi-
cal philosophy that, far from the cave allegory, would have as its task

Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy over Politics 979

to describe the articulation of the human condition and, at the same
time, its reinforcement. Gontrary to Plato, who, by displacing the Form
of Beauty with the Form of Good, demeans politics by reducing it to
suitability in the quest for accuracy (which is orthos and therefore cut
from all relationship to truth), Arendt's task is to rehabilitate politics
by offering the possibility of a relationship to nonveiling, to aletheia.
Not so much by returning to the platonic displacement, which would
signify that, despite the reversal, we remain vdthin the continuity by
subscribing to the authority of the theory of Forms, but by keeping in
mind that Beauty, even if it knows of the victory of Form over truth,
retains a privileged relationship vdth nonveiling, with truth.
Gan we not see here that there is, for Arendt, an echo "of the
Heideggerian radicalization of Aristotle practical philosophy" at the
end of which praxis no longer indicates a particular action but a modal-
ity of being? In Franco Volpi's words: "In the absence of a domain where
it can constitute itself, praxis must constitute itself by itself and on itself;
hence becoming the original ontological determination, autarkic; that
is, in itself its ovwi goal" (Volpi, 1988: 24). Does praxis not participate, in
its positive dimension, in the lifring of the concealment, to the nonveil-
ing that, as Heidegger reminds us at the end of his text on Plato, is a
fundamental feature of being itself?
Translated from the French by Martin Breaugh.

NOTES
1. We are faced here with an interpretive problem: in order to define
the life of the multitude, Arendt speaks of the cave. Evidently, she is
not speaking of the Platonic cave, but of a more general sense that
refers to the domain of human affairs, to what philosophers tend to
call the "cave of human affairs," precisely the expression that Arendt
will use on the same page, as if to dissolve the initial ambiguity.
2. In "What is Authority?" Arendt acknowledges her debt: "This presen-
tation is indebted to Martin Heidegger's great interpretation of the
cave parable in Platom Lehre von der Wahrheit, Bern, 1947. Heidegger
demonstrates how Plato transforms the concept oftruth (aletheia) until

980 social research

 it became identical vidth correct statements (orthotes). Gorrectness
indeed and not truth, would be required if the philosopher's knowl-
edge is the ability to measure." Having said this, Arendt will critique
Heidegger for ignoring the political dimension needed to understand
the transformation of the concept of truth. "Although he explicitly
mentions the risks the philosopher runs when he is forced to retum
to the cave, Heidegger is not aware of the political context in which
the parable appears. According to him, the transformation comes to
pass because the subjective act of vision (idein, idea) takes precedence
over objective truth" (Arendt, 1961: 291 n. 16).
3. See also Between Past and Future, where the government of the philos-
opher-king is defined as "the domination of human affairs by some-
thing outside its own realm" (Arendt, 1961:114).
4. "This defeat of Athens, which is the equivalent of the historical defeat
of democracy, has had incalculable historical consequences [...] it has
fixed the course of political philosophy for twenty-five centuries [...].
Plato and his political philosophy [...] are the result of the defeat of
Athenian democracy" (Gastoriadis, 2004:286).

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Arendt, Hannah, and Karl Jaspers. Correspondence, 1926-1969. Ed. E.
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Arendt, Hannah, and Martin Heidegger. lettres et autres documents
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