The Active Life: Miller's Metaphysics of Democracy

Notes

N o t e s PREFACE 1. There is no evidence in either the published or unpublished writings of Miller that he was familiar with Arendt’s work. The two were contemporaries, however, and both had a strong historical bent to their thought. Their common disinclination to separate thought from action may have led them both to give consideration to this ancient distinction. 2. See especially Joseph P. Fell’s “Miller: The Man and His Philosophy” and George P. Brockway’s “John William Miller.” Further information is available at the Web site of the John William Miller Fellowship Fund (http://www.williams.edu/ resources/miller). INTRODUCTION 1. In his essay “Miller: The Man and His Philosophy” Joseph Fell refers to Miller’s thought as a “philosophy of the act” (p. 27; cf. Mead, 1938). Actualism will be adopted in order to convey the importance placed on the act. Miller himself never referred to his position as actualism and consistently stated that it was a philosophy of history and a development of idealism. The virtue of historical idealism in comparison to actualism is that it emphasizes Miller’s own indebtedness to, and revision of, the idealist tradition. The great liability of historical idealism, however, is that it focuses attention on intellect while neglecting both action and the connection between action and intellect. 2. Miller’s philosophy has little to do with the concept of actualism used in discussions of possible-world theories. That understanding of actualism is described as follows: “Actualism is the philosophical position that everything there is—everything that can be said to exist in any sense—is actual. Put another way, actualism denies that there is any kind of being beyond actuality; to be is to be actual. Actualism therefore stands in stark contrast to possibilism, which, as we’ve seen, takes the things there are to include possible but non-actual objects” (Menzel, 2000). 193 3. Nicomachean Ethics, 1095b 13–95b 20. 4. For Arendt’s explorations of the active life in relation to the contemplative life see The Human Condition, Between Past and Future, and The Life of the Mind. 5. See the work of Arthur Danto and Donald Davidson for contemporary philosophy addressing action. 6. On this count, actualism diverges from the Greek conception of deeds. As Arendt noted, to the Greek mind deeds were distinct from fabrications. In fabrication somethingisproducedthatendures,evenifforashorttime,withouttheaidofmemory. If it were not for memory, deeds would be entirely lost. Fabrication thus was considered to lack the futility, but also the nobility, of deeds. Actualism aims to integrate action and fabrication along the same lines as Arendt when, in “The Concept of History,” she nuanced the Greek understanding of these two modes of human being: “Compared with the futility and fragility of human action, the world fabrication erects is of lasting permanence and tremendous solidity. Only insofar as the end product of fabrication is incorporated into the human world, where its use and eventual ‘history’ can never be fully predicted, does even fabrication start a process whose outcome cannot be entirely foreseen and is therefore beyond the control of its author. This means only that man is neverexclusivelyhomofaber,thateventhefabricatorremainsatthesametimeanacting being, who starts processes wherever he goes and with whatever he does” (1968, p. 60). 7. See the first chapter of Vincent Colapietro’s Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom, Fell’s “Miller: The Man and His Philosopohy,” and the first chapter of Stephen Tyman’s Descrying the Ideal for other accounts of the historical career and cultural context in which Miller’s philosophy has its place. 8. See Ortega y Gasset’s “History as a System,” in History as a System and Other Essays Toward a Philosophy of History. Miller’s assessment of Ortega is mixed. Impressed with Ortega’s appreciation of history and action, Miller is also uncomfortable with what he sees as Ortega’s excessive reliance on imagination and fiction. See an unpublished letter of Miller’s (MP 17:15) as well as Colapietro’s discussion in Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom (pp. 16–17). 9. Paradoxically, the ahistoricism of Christianity is built on a single, exemplary historical being—Jesus. As Miller notes in numerous places, Jesus is a man of action and a maker of history; Jesus is the word incarnate (MS 152–53). The peculiarity of Christianity is that it concentrates historicity and action in the life of a single man and excludes the rest of humanity from the active life (Arendt, 1968, p. 66). 10. Quoted in...