Chapter V – Will, Action and Collective Phenomenology
2. Inter-Subjective Objectivity of the Willing Phenomena
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In order to consider the political implications of the will, it will be useful to utilize some of Husserl’s insights about the inter-subjective objectivity of some mental experiences as well as the notion of collective conscience, which may manifest itself in groups of people. This will help us build a conception of “collective willing,” which may assist us in researching political willing and action.
However, development of the conception of “collective willing,” as well the demonstration of the objectivity of inter-subjective willing experiences is not the main goal of this research paper and it will only be briefly touched upon without detailed development and profound fundamental argumentation, which are necessary for the theoretical treatment of these concepts in a rigorous phenomenological inquiry into this subject matter.
2. Inter-Subjective Objectivity of the Willing Phenomena
The main task of this section is to establish the objectivity of various phenomena related to willing on the inter-subjective level. It is necessary to determine, whether objectivity and validity of these phenomena may be verified through experience and theoretically established. Otherwise, the willing experiences may not be shared by several persons and/or transmitted from one person to another.
This section will provide grounds for the next one, in which the phenomena of collective willing will be researched.
Before proceeding to considering Arendt’s contribution on these matters, it is necessary first to make some clarification about the word “society.” In Arendt’s view
“society” is not a proper term to refer to any group of people united by something into some kind of unity, since, according to Arendt, “society” is an artificial term, which has ideological implications, a term advocated by Marx and other “socialist” thinkers, who treated human beings mainly from the economic perspective as “motivated” or not
“motivated” production and labour “factors,” whose life and activities are determined by economic principles, and are predictable through behavioural sciences. Arendt claims
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that human beings should not be reduced to economic agents and/or factors, and have a freedom of will and action, this freedom implies freedom from economic determinism.
For this reason Arendt often refuses to use the word “society” and uses the word
“community.”
Arendt believes that the word “community” preserves both individual identity and the public realm. Every member of “community” is a free individual, however, he is also a member of a community, which introduces a “communal” or “public” aspect to his life. However, such public aspect does not destroy his freedom and individuality, which have to be preserved as a condition for a healthy political life, and for making political action possible for every individual.
In difference to “community,” Arendt indicates that the word “society” has a different connotation, which makes it inapplicable to the public domain. Arendt connects this word with the Greek notion of “οικονομία,” which means “house management/ordering” – a term, which is used for affairs of a group of people, which are aimed at benefiting this group of people, this term relates this group of people to a
“house” or a “family,” which is run by individuals, who are related to each other and constitute a family, which has its own tasks and some kind of “personality,” but it is still concerned with private matters, which are on the level of “order making” and “life preserving,” and are thus conditioned mainly by “needs” and necessity, rather than by freedom and spontaneity. The principles of freedom and “new beginning,” which are advocated by Arendt, must indeed be preserved and advocated for our discussion on will and action, however, it may be not necessary to insist on using the word “community” to preserve human individuality and freedom. The word “society” is thus to be used in our research to indicate the overall human population, which is may or may not be politically active. For our purposes, we will disregard the connotation of the word
“society,” which was pointed out by Arendt, and will use the word “society” in its customary sense.
We fully agree with Arendt that human beings should not and cannot be reduced to economic factors, and they preserve freedom. It is lack of this freedom that results in
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some predictability of human behaviour through behavioural sciences. These sciences and their methodological and theoretical presuppositions destroy human dignity and reject human freedom, and should thus be abandoned no matter whether they are effective or not. However, the word “society” does not necessarily have to carry such an
“ideological” or anthropological meaning. Thus, this word will be used in this research to refer either to all people living in a given country, or to some group of people. In or discussion this word will not carry any preconceptions about human beings and any collective formations of people. The word “community” will not be used very often to avoid narrow nationalistic or closed group connotations, which are sometimes carried by this word.
Arendt herself does not provide much reflection on the question of the inter-subjective constitution of human will. However, in her thought there is often a transition between the realms of faculties of human mind of a single subject and the significance of these faculties in the realm of the whole of human society. In The Human Condition she does much reflection upon the issues pertaining to the whole of society due to the lack of action. For Arendt “action” is a “product” or “manifestation” of the life of human mind, so her concern about the life of human community in The Human Condition means that for her the faculties of human mind have significance not only for the life of an individual but for the life of the society as a whole.
Theoretically this may be interpreted as a projection of the faculties of the human life to the realm of Husserlian “higher-order personalities” such as nations, social organizations or any groups of people united by something. Such projection must be based on an inter-subjective objectivisation of the experiences of the will, otherwise we can speak only about vague analogies and unverified hypotheses when we project faculties of a human mind onto a realm of social groups of people.
On the other hand, if we succeed in establishing an inter-subjective objectivity of the willing phenomena, then we can expand the realm of our rigorous phenomenological analysis, it would be able to include groups of people and their collective willing.
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To do a phenomenological research on such objectivity and the phenomenology of factors and even “faculties” pertaining to groups of people it is necessary to use the research results and methodology of Edmund Husserl, who was able to establish the inter-subjective objectivity of such groups and their common elements. In his Cartesian Meditations Husserl writes:
With communalization proper, social communalization, there become constituted within the Objective world, as spiritual Objectivities of a peculiar kind, the various types of social communities with their possible hierarchical order –, among them the pre-eminent types that have the character of “personalities of a higher order”.158
These are the “personalities” this and the following sections of this Chapter are to be concerned with. The present chapter is dedicated to establishing the objectivity of the willing phenomena pertaining to these higher order personalities. While in the following chapter we shall inquire into various kinds of phenomena of collective willing and there will be an attempt made to construct a theoretical framework for understanding collective willing, collective action and political action.
In order to establish the inter-subjective objectivity of the willing phenomena and of any form of collective willing we can utilize Husserl’s methodology of establishing the inter-subjective objectivity of the ‘first and lowest level’, of what Husserl calls “the communalization of monads”. This may enable us to proceed to the next section’s analysis per se of the phenomenology of the “faculty” of willing of such “higher order personalities”.
How do we establish the inter-subjective objectivity of a “higher order personality.” Essentially, we may establish it in a way similar to establishing any inter-subjective objectivity. Without going into much detail we claim that experiences, which
158 Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1960. P.
132.
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are shared by various subjects under relatively similar conditions, provide us grounds for positing an inter-subjective objectivity of these experiences and their corresponding mental objects as soon as these experiences coincide and are reported to be similar to one another providing some degree of tolerance for minor variations.
For example, if several people see a scene of robbery and each of these persons sees that there is a hatred of the robber towards the victim of this crime, then we may claim that this “hatred” possesses an inter-subjective objectivity. In order to support this claim we may also confirm with the robber himself whether he felt hatred towards the victim.
We may take this example a step further. Let us suppose that the spectators of the robbery scene all felt a disapproval of this act of robbery, moreover each of them claims that his mental experience of disapproval is exactly the same as the corresponding experiences of other spectators, in such case we may also claim that the experience of disapproval also possesses an inter-subjective objectivity.
Now let us take this example even further to illustrate an instance of a collective personality, which possesses a collective feeling and even has a collective will. Let us suppose that the spectators of the robbery scene discover that they have a common mental experience of disapproving the act of the robbery and all of them decide to act collectively to prevent this act from being completed and they together exercise their collective will and all partake in the collective action of preventing this robbery from being successfully completed.
In the above mental example, we have demonstrated how positing of an inter-subjective objectivity is possible and even have demonstrated how the inter-inter-subjective objectivity provides grounds for positing a “higher order personality” and a “higher order willing” and a “higher order action.” A more detailed treatment of the possibility of positing “higher order personality” and “higher order mental activity” and its manifestation in the world of appearances will be researched and systematized in order to provide theoretical grounds for the research on “collective willing” and “collective
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action,” which are important for considering political action, which according to Arendt is the main manifestation of human will and freedom.