DOCSLIB.ORG

Hannah Arendt's Theory of Freedom: a Reinterpretation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Hannah Arendt's Theory of Freedom: a Reinterpretation View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Freedom: A Reinterpretation By Luke Neal A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science and International Studies School of Government and Society College of Social Sciences University of Birmingham September 2015 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract Freedom is undoubtedly a central concept employed by Hannah Arendt in her political thought, yet I believe that it remains open to further interpretation. This thesis attempts to outline what Arendt means by the term and the implications of it for her thought more broadly. Advancing a nuanced methodology which seeks to understand the relationship between Arendt’s primary concepts, this thesis examines how a large body of terms come together to form her unique and heavily politicised theory of freedom. These ideas are often related to Arendt’s philosophy of speech, which draws heavily upon ancient Greek political understanding. The thesis proceeds with reference to her critique of totalitarian language and the problems that she associates with it, which is then compared specifically with the Greek account of rhetoric. From here the thesis proceeds toward Arendt’s ideal of political discourse which it is suggested also is heavily grounded in the German hermeneutic tradition. Combining the Greek and German influences, I conclude that Arendt’s account of freedom should be labelled freedom as rhetoric. Building upon this observation it is then claimed that Arendt is best understood as advancing a form of hermeneutic republicanism. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the University of Birmingham for giving me the opportunity to write this thesis through their generous scholarship and teaching opportunities. I would also like to thank Richard Shorten, Andrew Knops, and Steve Buckler for their superb guidance over the past years. None of this would have been written, of course, without the support of my great friends and family. Thanks, again. Table of Contents 0. Introduction 1 0.1. Understanding Arendt’s Philosophical Method 1 0.2. A Basic Method of Terminological Analysis 12 0.3. Thesis Summary 15 1. Chapter One: Politics, Freedom, and Speech 19 1.1. The Puzzle of Political Action 19 1.2. Speech in Antiquity 23 1.3. Speech and the tradition of Political Philosophy 29 1.4. Speech in Modernity 32 1.5. Socratic Speech 42 1.6. Politics Against Cliché 47 2. Chapter Two: Modernity and Friendship 49 2.1. Loneliness and the Totalitarian 50 2.2. The Path Toward Loneliness 57 2.3. Re-thinking Modern Friendship 64 2.4. Classical Friendship 70 2.5. Friendship and Political Association 76 3. Chapter Three: Judgment and Political Responsibility 78 3.1. The Moral Lessons of Totalitarianism 79 3.2. Judgment as Political Understanding 84 3.3. Hermeneutics and the Binding Power of Rhetoric 93 3.4. Responsibility for the World 101 3.5. Towards Connecting Judgment and Freedom 109 4. Chapter Four: Action and Principle 111 4.1. Defining Political Principle 112 4.2. Principles and Values 119 4.3. The Principle of Totalitarianism 122 4.4. Principles in the Great Revolutions 130 4.5. Toward Freedom 143 5. Chapter Five: Freedom as Rhetoric 145 5.1. Freedom as the Meaning of the Political 146 5.2. Movement as the Basis of Freedom 149 5.3. The Act of Founding as the Relatively Absolute 156 5.4. Freedom and Principle 163 5.5. Freedom as Rhetoric 168 5.6. Towards an Arendtian Theory of Hermeneutic Republicanism 179 6. Conclusion 186 6.1. Thesis Summary 186 6.2. Considering Freedom as Rhetoric 189 6.3. Considering Hermeneutic Republicanism 194 6.4. Thinking About the Past For the Present 198 7. Bibliography 202 Abbreviations EJ: Eichmann in Jerusalem EU: Essays in Understanding HC: The Human Condition JP: The Jew as Pariah K: Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy MDT: Men in Dark Times OT: The Origins of Totalitarianism OV: On Violence PAP: Philosophy and Politics PP: The Promise of Politics RJ: Responsibility and Judgment T: ‘Thinking’ in The Life of the Mind TMC: Thinking and Moral Considerations W: ‘Willing’ in The Life of the Mind A Note Arendt supplied highly gendered language, often referring to humanity as ‘man’ or ‘mankind’. For the sake of staying true to Arendt’s language, I have not attempted to change this. I hope that this will not be interpreted in a negative manner. The Greek polis will continue to exist at the bottom of our political existence…for as long as we use the word ‘politics’ Hannah Arendt Men in Dark Times Introduction This thesis seeks to examine what I believe to be the most important term for the writings of German political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975): freedom. Within the following chapters I proceed with an analysis of the concepts that feed into her understanding of freedom, with the intention of granting the term further clarity. Throughout the thesis I attempt to show how her account of freedom is influenced by various observations regarding both the totalitarian phenomenon and traditional philosophy as founded by Plato. One of the central claims which influences proceedings is the vast influence that her theory of speech exerts over her thought, which culminates in my final description of Arendtian freedom as rhetoric. Using this account of freedom as rhetoric I then question how this impacts our understanding of Arendtian politics, focussing in particular on her republicanism. In this introduction I introduce Arendt’s philosophical method and then use this as a means of generating an appropriate method for the task of this thesis, which I label gravitational. Following this, I provide a quick summary of the arguments made throughout these pages. 0.1 Understanding Arendt's Philosophical Method Close friend of Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, has provided two of the most revealing descriptions of Arendt's writings. The first emerged during an exchange at a conference in Toronto, 1972: This space that Hannah Arendt creates in her work and which one can walk into with the great sense of walking through an arch into a liberated area and a great part of it is 1 occupied by definitions. Very close to the roots of Hannah Arendt's thinking is the distinguo: ' I distinguish this from that. I distinguish labor from work. I distinguish fame from reputation.'...I think that the chance of invigoration and oxygenation does combine with some sense of stability and security. And that is through the elaboration, the marvellous, shall we say, unfolding of definitions. Each of her works is an unfolding of definitions, which of course touch on the subject, and more and more enlighten it as one distinction unfolds (after another) (McCarthy, 1979: 337-338) In response, Arendt acknowledged that she always initiated the study of topics via a definitional process. The second quotation is from McCarthy's eulogy 'Saying Goodbye To Hannah' published in The New York Review of Books a month after Arendt's sudden death in 1975: If I understood her, Hannah was always more for the Many than the One...She did not want to find a master key or universal solvent...The proliferation of distinctions in her work, branching out in every direction like tender shoots, no doubt owes something to her affection for the scholastics but it also testifies to a sort of typical awe-struck modesty before the world's abundance and intense particularity (2006: 33) Both quotations centre around Arendt's literary method of definition and distinction, identifying a practice which remains curiously ignored in the vast body of literature surrounding one of contemporary political theory's most divisive names. Examples of this structure abound: most conspicuously, it is found in the categorisation of the human activities in The Human Condition and the mental faculties in The Life of the Mind; In both cases, the definition of terms configure the development of the text with each term analysed separately; the main body of The Human Condition is comprised of three chapters corresponding to 'labour', 'work', and 'action' (which, incidentally, succeeds a chapter on the public-private distinction), just as The Life of the Mind is a trilogy split between 'thought', 'will', and 2 'judgment'. On a condensed scale, some of the 'exercises in political thought' collected in Between Past and Future bear the hallmark of this approach; for instance, the chapter 'The Concept of History' clearly develops around the distinction between objectivity and impartiality (BPF: see pages 48-53). What this displays is a manner of political thinking consciously directed by a method of definition and distinction, and for this reason Mary McCarthy has revealed a particularly fruitful interpretative resource. To phrase it directly, Arendt very clearly thinks terminologically. I believe, therefore, that the abundance of terms which Arendt employs is her core strength, and is the source of interest for many people in her writings. Similarly, it is hard to find commentaries which are not led to a large extent by her terminological structures.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Reading Arendt's on Revolution After the Fall of the Wall
    Keeping the Republic: Reading Arendt’s On Revolution after the Fall of the Wall Dick Howard Introduction: From where do you speak, comrade? Two decades after the fall of the Wall seemed to announce – by default, as an unexpected gift – the triumph of democracy, optimism appears at best naïve, at worst an ideological manipulation of the most cynical type. The hope was that the twin forms of modern anti-politics – the imaginary planned society and the equally imaginary invisible hand of the market place – would be replaced by the rule of the demos; citizens together would determine the values of the commonwealth. The reality was at first the ‘New World Order’ of George H.W. Bush; then the indecisive interregnum of the Clinton years; and now the crass take over of democratic rhetoric by the neo-conservatives of George W. Bush. ‘Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains,’ wrote Rousseau at the outset of The Social Contract; how this came about was less important, he continued, than what made it legitimate: that was what needed explanation. So it is today; what is it about democracy that makes it the greatest threat to its own existence? In this context, it is well to reread Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution, published in 1963. On returning recently to my old (1965) paperback edition, I was struck by the spare red and black design of the cover, which was not (as I thought for a moment) a subtle allusion to the conflict of communism and anarchism for the realization of ‘true’ democracy, but simply the backdrop against which the editor stressed these sentences: ‘With nuclear power at a stalemate, revolutions have become the principal political factor of our time.
    [Show full text]
  • A Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence by Hannah Arendt | the New York Review of Books
    A Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence by Hannah Arendt | The New York Review of Books EMAIL Tweet Share A Special Supplement: Refections on Violence Hannah Arendt FEBRUARY 27, 1969 ISSUE I These reflections were provoked by the events and debates of the last few years, as seen against the background of the twentieth century. Indeed this century has become, as Lenin predicted, a century of wars and revolutions, hence a century of that violence which is currently believed to be their common denominator. There is, however, another factor in the present situation which, though predicted by nobody, is of at least equal importance. The technical development of implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict. Hence, warfare—since times immemorial the final merciless arbiter in international disputes—has lost much of its effectiveness and nearly all of its glamor. “The apocalyptic” chess game between the superpowers, that is, between those that move on the highest plane of our civilization, is being played according to the rule: “if either ‘wins’ it is the end of both.”1 Moreover the game bears no resemblance to whatever war games preceded it. Its “rational” goal is mutual deterrence, not victory. Since violence—as distinct from power, force, or strength—always needs implements (as Engels pointed out long ago),2 the revolution in technology, a revolution in tool-making, was especially marked in warfare. The very substance of violent action is ruled by the question of means and ends, whose chief characteristic, if applied to human affairs, has always been that the end is in danger of being overwhelmed by the means, which it both justifies and needs.
    [Show full text]
  • Arendt's Violence/Power Distinction and SARTRE's Violence/Counter-Violence Distinction: the Phenomenology of Violence in Co
    CHAPTER SIX ARENDT’S VIOLENCE/POWER DISTINCTION AND SARTRE’S VIOLENCE/COUNTER-VIOLENCE DISTINCTION: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF VIOLENCE IN COLONIAL AND POST-ColonIAL CONTEXTS Kathryn T. Gines The theme of violence can be traced throughout Hannah Arendt’s major political writings such as The Human Condition and On Revolution where she draws connections between war, violence, and necessity (or libera- tion from necessity); The Origins of Totalitarianism where she examines Europe’s uses of violence in concentration camps, as well as massacre and imperialism in Africa; and, of course, On Violence where she condemns the violence of the Black Power movement and of anti-colonialism. The essay that follows will take as its starting point the violence/power dis- tinction and then the appropriate uses of violence versus non-violence as presented in Arendt’s On Violence. I argue that this distinction between violence and power is misapplied in Arendt’s critique of Jean-Paul Sar- tre and Frantz Fanon’s analyses of anti-colonial revolutionary violence in Algeria. Arendt wrongly interprets Sartre and Fanon’s analyses of violence and counter-violence in The Wretched of the Earth and Critique of Dialecti- cal Reason and her critique of violence proves to be unbalanced. On my view, she rejects their analyses because they argue for the use of violence by the oppressed to overcome the violent system of colonialism. I con- tend that it is because they argue for revolutionary violence (or counter- violence) against their oppressors that Sartre and Fanon are accused of glorifying violence for violence’s sake. In the concluding section of the essay, I briefly consider the possibil- ity that while Arendt’s critique of anti-colonial violence is misguided, her analysis might prove helpful when applied to the post-colonial context in which former anti-colonial leaders fighting for independence strike out violently against the people.
    [Show full text]
  • Reports the Maozedongism of Chinese Politics and the Xi Factor
    Reports The Maozedongism of Chinese Politics and the Xi Factor *Stein Ringen 26 April 2018 Al Jazeera Centre for Studies Tel: +974-40158384 jcforstudies@aljazeera.net http://studies.aljazeera.n [Getty] As part of his critical paradigm of political systems in the West as well as in the East in the 21st century, sociologist and political scientist Stein Ringen proposes another nuanced reflection of a two-part study of the challenges of global democracy. Back in February, the first paper “When America’s Democracy Needs a Health-Check: Polarization and the Trump Factor” focused on the Trump factor in the decline of American democracy. Now, the second paper addresses how China has proceeded with its own political transformation in 2018. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has decided to add Chinese President Xi Jinping’s political thought and the National Supervision System into the country’s constitution.(1) As Ringen wrote in a recent publication, “the modern Chinese state does not rely on being forbidding to its people in their daily lives. Indeed, ordinary Chinese now have many freedoms that no one interferes with. But the state has its red lines and does forbid what cannot be accepted: interference in Party affairs and organizing outside of the Party apparatus.”(2) According to the author, Xi Jinping has proved himself the most formidable leader in China after Mao. The first bastion for Xi to topple was pragmatism. Under his watch, all the reins of dictatorship have been tightened. The second bastion to fall was collective leadership. At the Party Congress in October 2017, he had his “thought” inscribed in the Party’s Constitution, lifting himself on to the pedestal previously occupied only by Mao.
    [Show full text]
  • Albert Camus As Moral Politician
    Articles The Passion and the Spirit: Albert Camus as Moral Politician Jan Klabbers* TABLE OF CONTENTS: I. Introduction. – II. A manifesto. – III. On Camus. – IV. Camus and the virtues. – V. A smouldering continent. – V.1. Financial crisis. – V.2. Refugee flows. – V.3. Russia and Crimea. – V.4. Refer- enda, governance, responsibility. – VI. To conclude. ABSTRACT: This essays addresses the curious circumstance that for all their visibility on blogs, twitter and the 'op-ed' pages of newspapers, public intellectuals offer remarkably little ethical guidance regarding current events and crises. These intellectuals may offer their expertise (explanations, predictions), but do not provide much ethical inspiration, almost as if 'right' and 'wrong' have be- come meaningless categories. Things were different a few generations ago, when the likes of Al- bert Camus would search their souls in order to figure out how to live. This essay portrays Camus as private citizen and public moralist, and briefly discusses current political events in a mindset inspired by Camus. KEYWORDS: Albert Camus – virtue ethics – political crisis – Europe – public intellectuals. “… for us Europe is a home of the spirit where for the last twenty centuries the most amazing adventure of the human spirit has been going on”.1 I. Introduction Europe is, if not on fire, at least smouldering. The last couple of years alone have seen the continent confronted with the unabashed annexation of the Crimea; the shooting down, accidental or otherwise, of civilian aircraft; a financial crisis and a country on the brink of bankruptcy; and an influx of refugees seen as threatening in its own right, and which threatens to bring down the European Union (EU) and threatens to turn Europe * Academy Professor (Martti Ahtisaari Chair), University of Helsinki, and Visiting Research Professor, Erasmus Law School, Erasmus University Rotterdam, jan.klabbers@helsinki.fi.
    [Show full text]
  • The Federal System of Hannah Arendt: a Structure Built Upon Participation Mav Block
    † Designated as an Exemplary Master’s Project for 2019-2020 The Federal System of Hannah Arendt: A Structure Built Upon Participation Mav Block Faculty Advisor: Dr. Robert Mitchell Marcello Lotti Professor of English Department of English March 2020 This project was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program in the Graduate School of Duke University. © Copyright by Mav Block 2020 Abstract In this thesis, I reconstruct Hannah Arendt’s theory of federalism through a novel interpretation of the relationship between power and authority in her work. Though numerous scholars underscore the import of federalism for Arendt’s politics, theorists have remained silent; some, who champion her council state, acknowledge its federal character – yet none have sought her federal theory. I argue the federal system for Arendt shares a necessary and constitutive relationship to the council state. For Arendt, federal authority is derived from an act of foundation by already constituted powers, while the preservation of this authority depends upon the ongoing capacity of those powers to act individually and collectively. This means, for Arendt, that the federal system demands the specific form of direct public participation in government institutionalized by the council state for its longevity, otherwise it will degenerate. Through exposing Arendt’s federal thought, I show that her reflections on federalism offer valuable insights into the division of powers, the system of checks and balances, the relationship between law and politics, the role of a constitutional court, as well as the danger posed by representative democracy, in what amounts in the last instance to a radical re-conception of the federal republic.
    [Show full text]
  • THE PROMISE POLITICS Hannah Arendt
    THE PROMISE +++ OF +++ POLITICS Hannah Arendt Edired and with an Introduction by Jerome Kohn SCHOCKEN BOOKS, NEW YORK CONTENTS Introduction by Jerome Kohn vii Socrates The Tradition of Political Thought 40 Montesquieu's Revision of the Tradition 63 From Hegel to Marx 70 The End of Tradition 8, Introduction into Politics 93 Epilogue 201 Index 205 INTRODUCTION INTO POLITICS I What Is Politics? Politics is based on the fact of human plurality. God created man, but men are a human, earthly product, the product of human namre. Because philosophy and theology are always concerned with man, because all their pronouncements would he correct if there were only one or two men or only identical men, they have found no valid philosophical answer to the question: What is poli- tics? Worse still, for all scientific thinking there is only man-in biology, or psychology, as in philosophy and theology, just as in zoology there is only the lion. Lions would be of concern only to lions. What is remarkable among all great thinkers is the difference in rank between their political philosophies and the rest of their works--even in Plato. Their politics never reaches the same depth. This lack of depth is nothing but a failure to sense the depths in which politics is anchored. Politics deals with the coexistence and association of different men. Men organize themselves politically according to certain essential commonalities found within or abstracted from an absolute chaos ofdifferences. As long as political bodies are based 93 -_...- --------- THE PROMISE OF POLITICS Introduction into Polz'n.'cs on the family and conceived in the image of the family, kinship in There are two good reasons why philosophy has never found a all its degrees is credited on the one hand as being able to unite place where politics can take shape.
    [Show full text]
  • Hannah Arendt's Political Action: a Dialectic of Expression and Deliberation
    Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2018 Hannah Arendt's Political Action: A Dialectic of Expression and Deliberation Paul Richard Leisen Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Leisen, Paul Richard, "Hannah Arendt's Political Action: A Dialectic of Expression and Deliberation" (2018). Dissertations. 3347. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3347 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact ecommons@luc.edu. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2018 Paul Richard Leisen LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO HANNAH ARENDT’S POLITICAL ACTION: A DIALECTIC OF EXPRESSION AND DELIBERATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN PHILOSOPHY BY PAUL R. LEISEN CHICAGO, IL DECEMBER 2018 Copyright by Paul R. Leisen, 2018 All rights reserved. “I’ll have grounds more relative than this–the play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” —Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet, III.i.603 (RS 1159) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am fortunate to acknowledge the following people for their support and commitment to my work. Without their guidance, love, and shared investment, this project would not have come to fruition. KellyAnn Corcoran’s love and unwavering belief made the pursuit of this work possible. Our children: Betty, Matthias, Penelope, and Sven grew up as this project developed, they have known Hannah Arendt’s name for as long as they can remember.
    [Show full text]
  • DOCTORAL THESIS the Fate of Judgement Hannah Arendt, The
    DOCTORAL THESIS The Fate of Judgement Hannah Arendt, The Third Critique and Aspects of Contemporary Political Philosophy Horner, Christopher Award date: 2012 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 01. Oct. 2021 The Fate of Judgement Hannah Arendt, The Third Critique and Aspects of Contemporary Political Philosophy By Christopher Horner, BA, MPhil A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Humanities Roehampton University University of Surrey 2011 1 Abstract In this work I examine the role of judgment in the writings of Hannah Arendt. I argue that consideration of this concept helps to shed light on her important contribution to political philosophy, and in particular on the often overlooked radical aspects of her work. Judgment lies at the heart of a cluster of characteristically ‘Arendtian’ themes: those of natality, plurality, narrative and the relation between political action, thought and disclosure, as well as her notions of political public space and its relation to past and future.
    [Show full text]
  • Camus with and Against the Theorists of Dialogic Ethics
    CHAPTER 4 From Revolution to Rebellion: Camus with and against the Theorists of Dialogic Ethics 1 Beyond Nihilism, Sympathetic Imagination: Camus with Levinas “Yes, there is a crisis of man when the death or torture of a [human] being can in our world be examined with a sentiment of indifference or of amiable curi- osity . ., or with simple passivity . .,” Albert Camus proclaimed to his American audience at the McMillan Theatre on 28 March 1946.845 Characteristically, rather than launch into declamations concerning first principles or exegesis of august authorities, Camus illustrated his meaning by narrating four con- crete examples. All of these had been related to him by victims or witnesses. They dated from the six years of the European war, then finished for less than one year. In the first, an SS guard, after torturing his two charges in what today would be called an ‘enhanced interrogation’ session, calmly took his petit déjeuner in front of the battered men. Reproached by one of them for the derisive inhu- manity of this action, the guard replied calmly that “he never pays any mind to his lodgers”—for the make-shift prison was a requisitioned tenement building. Camus’ second example came from one of his resistance comrades. This man had his ear torn off, in another ‘enhanced interrogation session’ with the Nazis. His tormenter then approached him, leaned close to his bandaged head and asked with affected concern: “how are your ears?” Camus’ third story involved a classic Sophie’s choice: the kind of bizarre, catastrophic situation that still exercises moral philosophy classes.
    [Show full text]
  • The Meaning and Value of Freedom: Berlin Contra Arendt
    The Meaning and Value of Freedom: Berlin contra Arendt Kei Hiruta* This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The European Legacy on 30 September 2014, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2014.965520 Abstract This essay considers the theoretical disagreement between Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt on the meaning and value of freedom. Berlin thinks that negative liberty as non- interference is commendable because it is attuned to the implication of value pluralism that man is a choice-making creature and cannot be otherwise. By contrast, the political freedom to act is in Arendt’s view a more fulfilling ideal because it is only in political action that man’s potentiality is actualised, his unique identity manifested and his being- in-the-world-with-others reaffirmed. What lies beneath the two thinkers’ dispute over the most satisfactory meaning of freedom, I argue, is a deeper disagreement over human nature itself. The implication of this analysis for the contemporary debate between pluralist liberals and their agonistic critics is briefly discussed in conclusion. * Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD, UK. Email: kei.hiruta@philosophy.ox.ac.uk Introduction One of the interesting things that the posthumous publication of Isaiah Berlin’s letters has revealed is the extent of his aversion to Hannah Arendt. For example, in February 1959, several months after Arendt’s now classic The Human Condition was published, Berlin told his friend Morton White that the book was “absolutely unreadable” and her argument in the first several chapters “absolutely awful.” “Is there something in her after all?” Berlin asked White, only to encourage him to “up and rout her.”1 Berlin’s misgivings were not only about her work but also about her personality.
    [Show full text]
  • Arendt's Revolutionary Antiquity
    ARENDT’S REVOLUTIONARY ANTIQUITY MIRIAM LEONARD N HER BOOK ON REVOLUTION, published in 1963, the political theorist Hannah Arendt asks why revolution had become one of the dominant modes of polit- I ical expression in the twentieth century. Arendt’sreflections on revolution form an important counterpart and fascinating supplement to her more monu- mental writings on twentieth-century despotism. In her magnum opus, The Ori- gins of Totalitarianism, Arendt would formulate a deeply pessimistic vision of modernity.1 In exploring the rise of Hitler, she demonstrates how modern total- itarian regimes have not just been political tyrannies; they have infiltrated the pri- vate economic and cultural lives of their citizens and laid clam “to every corner of human existence.”“Tolitarianism’s essence,” she asserts, “is the total domination of human beings by the terror. [...] At their heart is the attempted extirpation of all human ‘spontaneity,’ which is to say human freedom.”2 As Jonathan Schell argues, “alongside this portrait of the political world, On Revolution seems to be- long to another moral universe. [...] In place of the concentration camps, the his- torical scene at the dead center of On Revolution is the Mayflower Compact.”3 Where the earlier book analyzed the suppression of freedom with forensic detail, the later writings celebrate the project of human emancipation through action in concert. The trajectory of Arendt’s thought is well illustrated by the opening pas- sages of On Revolution: Wars and revolutions—as though events had only hurried up to fulfil Lenin’s prediction— have thus far determined the physiognomy of the twentieth century.
    [Show full text]