Page 319 - Contribution To Phenomenology

312 MANO DANIEL

aspect by reducing Man to the biological capacity for labor by charac-
terizing him as a "species-being." As laborer, human existence is reduced
to its capacity to Uve and toil as an undifferentiated member of a
species. Individuality is marginalized as the allegedly "real" function of life
is the preservation and perpetuation of the human species. The
identification of the biological with the social was to obscure, even
occlude, the pohtical dimension of human life. As Arendt puts it,
hyperbohcally, "[i]f this inside were to appear, we would all look alike."^^
Human beings wrench themselves, as least partially, out of this life
cycle by virtue of their individual rectilinear existence; that is, in terms
of a beginning (natahty, or birth), middle, and end (death). It is by the
capacity to work—to fabricate, or make a human artifice—and to
act—^which affirms and expresses individuahty—that the biographical
individual is constituted. In political action man "communicate[s] himself
and not merely something—thirst or hunger, affection or hostility or
fear."^^ Consequently, she argued that there was nothing politically
interesting nor distinctive about the biological self per se. Human unique-
ness is a pubhc and biographical characteristic. Hence her insistence that
human beings have a biological or sociological and a biographical
existence.
Arendt argues further that life-stories not only provide a more
accurate account of the public/cultural world, but that they can also serve
as exemplars for moral and pohtical behavior. Accordingly, she published
Men in Dark Times (1968) which comprises a series of encomiums or
testimonials of persons, such as Karl Jaspers, Rosa Luxemburg, Isak
Dinesen and Randall Jarrell, that she admired. Arendt argues that such
people provide "illumination" in difficult times. This not primarily because
they provide normative principles for action, but rather, because they are
people who continued to think, reflect and hve actively. Their stories
provide exemplars of individuals striving to lead integral, unified hves and
are part of the practical task of "contemporary memorialization."^^
While James Clifford argues that this presentation of a unique unified
Hfe may be a conceit of biography, he nevertheless recognizes it poUti-
cal/practical value. Even as we live in an age that champions the ideal

^^ Hannah Arendt, Life of the Mind, Vol I (New York: Harcourt Brace
Javanovich, 1978), 29.
^^ Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 176.
^^ Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, "The Writing of Biography," 135.