Abstract

Fred Dallmayr is one of the most perceptive commentators on the implications of continental philosophy for political thinking. Following Hannah Arendt he describes his essays as "exercises in contemporary political theory." Whether exploring the meaning of Heidegger's reflections on freedom, Gadamer, Oakeshott or Rorty on conversation and dialogue, Habermas on communicative action and rationality, or Foucault on power, Dallmayr has the rare gift of enabling texts "to speak to us" in new and illuminating ways. He beautifully exhibits a theme that he explores in several of these essays--authentic conversation, where he shows us how to listen to the other and to pursue in depth the common subject matter--die Sache. These exercises continue the investigations begun in his Twilight of Subjectivity: Contributions to a Post-Individualist Theory of Politics. The important and intriguing aspect of Dallmayr's project is the way in which he confronts contemporary critiques of individualism, subjectivism, and humanism--and yet dialectically seeks to incorporate the "truth" of what is being criticized. His primary concern is with reconstruction rather than deconstruction. Throughout there is the exercise of good judgment and phronësis in his balanced interpretations. The dominant figure in Dallmayr's own meditative thinking is Heidegger. Dallmayr presents us with one of the most judicious, sensitive, and insightful interpretations of Heidegger's relevance for understanding the meaning of polis and praxis. The opening sentence of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism may well be taken as an epigraph for the entire volume: "We are still far from pondering the essence of action seriously enough." Like Heidegger, Dallmayr wants to dislodge the concepts of freedom and power from human willfulness and subjectivity, and to show that the essence of freedom involves solidarity--a reciprocal effort of liberation or a mutual "letting-be." Dallmayr underscores "the exploratory, non-systematic, or en route" character of his essays. One source of uneasiness that a reader may feel arises from the sheer variety of political views represented by the thinkers that Dallmayr examines including Strauss, Heidegger, Gadamer, Oakeshott, Rorty, Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault. For they cover the political spectrum. There are many directions that a post-individualist theory of politics may take. It is not entirely clear from these exploratory essays where we or Dallmayr are being led. To use a Hegelian turn of phrase, one needs more "determinate negation"--more specificity--in Dallmayr's own Holzwege. The type of tensions that have been characteristic of the Hegelian legacy where one can read Hegel as a potentially radical and revolutionary thinker or as a fundamentally conservative thinker--tensions which have continued to plague a good deal of political thinking since Hegel are implicit in and not yet resolved by Dallmayr. Nevertheless, although one follows the many pathways opened up for us with a certain amount of intellectual caution, the journey is an exciting and revealing one.-Richard J. Bernstein, Haverford College.