and ethics in the very structure of language, but she also appreciates public
life as the place where the most fundamental dimension of being is disclosed
and enacted. Her thought forms potential links to Derridians, Foucauldians,
and Deleuzians ( 1985 ) in its focus on the open-ended character of enactment,
the ambiguity of freedom, and time as becoming in a world that is not
entirely given (Arendt 1971 ). These last two themes are blunted, however, by
Arendt’s hesitancy to carry them into the center of nature and human
biology. If and as Arendt is placed into conversation with the work of Ilya
Prigogine, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of complexity theory, and Brian
Goodwin, a leading theorist of complexity in biology, the conversation may
take yet another turn (Prigogine 2003 ; Prigogine and Stengers 1997 ; Goodwin
1994 ). Their work, resonating with the biocultural theories of Friedrich
Nietzsche, William James ( 1996 ), Gilles Deleuze ( 1994 ), and Henri Bergson
( 1998 ), rejects the primacy of eYcient cause in natural science, approaching
physical systems and organisms with what might be called a theory of
emergent causality (Bennett 2001 ; Connolly 2002 ; De Landa 2002 ; Widder
2002 ). Prigogine ( 2003 ) explores those physical systems (e.g. cells, hurricanes,
tornadoes, human body/brain processes, biological evolution, and the evo-
lution of the universe) that contain protean capacities of ‘‘self-organization.’’
When triggered by novel forces outside them, they periodically generate
modes of organization that transcend eYcient causation, escape human
powers of prediction, and usher new modes of being into the world. Goodwin
opposes genetic reductionism while exploring how living organisms ‘‘at the
edge of chaos’’ both preserve their form and periodically evolve from one
species to another. If and as Arendtians tap this conception of nature, they
may deepen their appreciation of the biocultural character of political life,
come to terms with multiple aYnities between human beings and the rest of
nature, and deepen their conversations with Nietzschean, Foucauldian,
Deleuzian, Bergsonian, and Jamesian perspectives in political thought. Recent
studies forging connections betweenWgures such as Walter Benjamin, Witt-
genstein, Arendt, and Foucault point in this direction (Brown 2004 ; Flath-
man 1989 ; Zerilli 2005 ). It would not hurt if Rawlsians joined such
explorations.
If Arendt, Butler, Rawls, Habermas, Taylor, Derrida, and Foucault played
deWning roles in American political theory in the 1980 s and 1990 s, by the
1990 s perhaps the most powerfulpublicphilosophy of the day was informed
by Leo Strauss. Public intellectuals indebted to him today include William
Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol. Strauss himself had both
834 william e. connolly