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The Subject of Praxis
Jacques Taminiaux, The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. Translated and edited by Michael Gendre. Albany: N.Y., State University of New York Press, 1997.
The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger begins with the history of an irony. Recounting Arendt's evocation of the seriousness with which in the Theatetus Plato recounts the story of the peasant woman from Thrace who laughs as Thales falls into the pit, Taminiaux suggests that Arendt's own view of the story is much more ironic. Heidegger, Taminiaux points out, also recounts this story in Die Frage nach dem Binge, a recounting in which Heidegger takes care to add that thinking is an activity about which housemaids necessarily laugh. What follows in this remarkable analysis of Arendt and Heidegger is a long reflection on how Arendtian irony increases in the course of her thought as she increasingly distances herself from the seriousness of professional thinkers, while Heidegger increasingly forgets the necessary laughter of the housemaids, joining ranks with those serious thinkers such as Plato for whom the housemaid's laughter becomes an indication of her inability to embrace the highest form of praxis, namely, the bios theoretikos.
It would be impossible in the short space of this review to take up Taminiaux's myriad analyses of Arendt's and Heidegger's thought. Simply put, his reading of Arendt is remarkable, tracing her understanding of the relation between thinking and praxis from The Human Condition through Life of the Mind and to several shorter essays including the all important 1954 essay, "Philosophy and Politics." Taminiaux's analysis of Arendt is unparalleled in its attention to the nuances, subtleties, and radical originality of her thought. His penetrating analyses of her thought is such that the reader is absolutely convinced of the urgency of the last line of this book, "we cannot go on as if she has not spoken."
Less convincing is Taminiaux's reading of Heidegger. His reading from the outset and continually throughout the book places Heidegger in close proximity with Husserl and at a great distance from Arendt. In what follows, I would like to take up three crucial analyses in Taminiaux's reading of Heidegger that serve as the basis for how Taminiaux ultimately understands...