The Wonder That Man Endures

“The wonder that man endures or which befalls him cannot be related in words because it is too general for words….That this speechless wonder is the beginning of philosophy became axiomatic for both Plato and Aristotle.”

-Hannah Arendt, "Philosophy and Politics"

Aristotle had told us that philosophy begins in thaumázein--  ????????? –“to wonder, marvel, be astonished.”    In the New Testament, the word appears only twice. In the parallel occurrences (Matthew 27:14 and Mark 15:5), Pilate marvels at the fact that Jesus says nothing.  What is significant is that thaumázein is associated there with an experience for which there were no words.  The word means a kind of an initial wordless astonishment at what is, at that that is is. For Aristotle, thaumázein is the beginning of philosophy as wonder.  It is not for the Greeks, therefore, the beginning of political philosophy.

Key here is the fact of speechlessness.  This wonder “cannot be related in words because it is too general for words.”  Arendt suggests that Plato encountered it in those moments in which Socrates, “as though seized by a rapture, [fell] into complete motionlessness, just staring without seeing or hearing anything.”  It follows that “ultimate truth is beyond words.” Nevertheless, humans want to talk about that which cannot be spoken. “As soon as the speechless state of wonder translates itself into words, it … will formulate in unending variations what we call the ultimate questions.”  These questions – what is being? Who is the human being? What is the meaning of life” what is death? And so forth “have in common that they cannot be answered scientifically.” Thus Socrates “I know that I do not know” is actually an expression that opens the door to the political,  public realm, in the recognition that nothing that can be said there can ever have the quality of being final.

According to Arendt, Socrates has three distinct aspects.  First he arouses citizens from their slumber – this is the gadfly who gets others to think, to think about those topics for which there is no final answer.  Secondly as “midwife” he decides – he makes evident – whether an opinion is fit to live or is merely an unimpregnated “wind-egg” (cf Theateatus 152a; 157d; 161a): Greek midwives not only assisted in the delivery but determined if the new-born was healthy enough to live.  Socrates concludes his discussion in the Theateatus (210b) by saying all they have done is to produce a mere wind-egg and that he must leave as he has to get to the courthouse for his trial. Lastly, as stinging ray, Socrates paralyzes in two ways.  He makes you stop and think; he destroys the certainty one has of received opinions.  Arendt is clear that this can be dangerous.  She goes on to say that “thinking is … dangerous to all creeds and, by itself, does not bring forth any new creed,” but she is equally clear that “non-thinking … has its dangers [which are] the possession of rules under which to subsume particulars.”  To think is dangerous: but to think is to desire wisdom, what is not there.  It is thus a longing; it is eros and, as with all things erotic, “to bring this relationship into the open, make it appear, men speak about it in the same way that the lover wants to speak of his beloved.” Where does this leave one? For the most part, in normal times, thinking is not of political use.  It is, however, of use, in times when the “center does not hold,” in times of crisis.

At these moments, thinking ceases to be a marginal affair in political matters.  When everybody is swept away unthinkingly by whatever everyone else does and believes in, those who think are drawn out of hiding because their refusal to join is conscious and thereby becomes a kind of action.  The purging element … is political by implication. For this destruction has a liberating effect on another human faculty, the faculty of judgment, … the faculty to judge particulars without subsuming them under those general rules which can be taught and learned until the grow into habits.

Suppose we read Arendt as saying that political philosophy must now turn and thaumázein – and wonder – not at that what is, is, but at the human reality, at the world of human activity.  This would involve a change in philosophy – for which she says philosophers are not particularly well equipped.  She thinks such a turn would rest on and derive from several elements – she mentions in particular Jaspers’ reformulation of truth as transcending the realm that can be instrumentally controlled, thus related to freedom;  Heidegger’s analysis of ordinary everyday life; and existentialism’s insistence on action.  It will be an inquiry into the “political significance of thought; that is into the meaningfulness and the conditions of thinking for a being that never exists in the singular and whose essential plurality is far from explored when an I-Thou relationship is added to the traditional understanding of human nature.”

What is problematic with purely philosophical thaumázein?  The Thracian maid who appears in the title to Jacques Taminiaux’s book and stands for Arendt in his analysis derives from an account in the Theateatus.  Upon encountering Thales who, all-focused in his wondering, had fallen into a well, the maid notes that the philosopher had “failed to see what was in front of him.”  Mary-Jane Robinson notes four elements to Arendt’s suspicion of excessive wonder, a suspicion one assumes was directed at Heidegger.  First, such wonder allows avoidance of the messiness of the everyday world; secondly, such “uncritical openness” leads philosophers to be “swept away by dictators.”  Thirdly, such wonder alienates the philosopher (as with Heidegger post-1945) from the world around him, and lastly, such openness to the mystery of the world, “disables decision making.”

If politics is the realm of how humans appear to each other when they act and speak, from whence does it come?  The only possible answer is that politics is an emergence from a realm which is neither that of action nor that of speech.  The political emerges from nothingness.  Perhaps this is the realm to which poetry can call us – and some of Arendt’s most moving essays are on poetry and literature – but such a realm is not political.  In this sense there is a limit to political science, as there is to all science.  For Arendt, there are no underlying causes out of which that which is political must emerge.  This is why political action is always for her a beginning and a marvel for which we have to try to find words.