HANNAH ARENDT (1906-1975) 1.

Arendt’s Thought: Context and Influences

Hannah Arendt is a 20th century political philosopher who is a most challenging figure for anyone wishing to understand the body of her work in political philosophy. She never wrote anything that would represent a systematic political philosophy. Rather, her writings cover many and diverse topics, spanning issues such as totalitarianism, revolution, the nature of freedom, the faculties of ‘thinking’ and ‘judging’, the history of political thought, and so on. A thinker of complicated arguments, her writings draw inspiration from Heidegger, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Nietzsche, Jaspers, and others. However, it may still be possible to present her thought as a coherent body of work that deals a single question. The question, with which Arendt’s thought engages, perhaps above all others, is that of the nature of politics and political life, as distinct from other domains of human activity. Her attempts to provide a clear and detailed answer to this question and, inter alia, to examine the historical and social forces that have come to threaten the existence of an autonomous political realm, have a distinctly phenomenological character. Arendt’s work, if it can be said to do anything, can be said to undertake a phenomenological reconstruction of the nature of political existence.

Phenomenology is the philosophical study of the structures of subjective experience and consciousness.

She proceeds neither by an analysis of general political concepts (such as authority, power, state, sovereignty, etc.,) traditionally associated with ‘political philosophy’, nor by accumulating empirical data associated with ‘political science.’ Rather, she adopts a phenomenological method, thereby trying to uncover the fundamental structures of political experience. Arendt sees the conceptual core of traditional political philosophy as an impediment to study the political experience because as it inserts presuppositions between the inquirer and

the political phenomena in question. 2.

Chronology Hannah Arendt’s Works

Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906, the only child of secular Jews. Post 1930, she continued her involvement in Jewish and Zionist politics. In 1933, fearing Nazi persecution she fled to Paris. In 1944, she began work on what would become her first major political book, The Origins of Totalitarianism and got it published it in 1951. Post this publishing, she acquired American Citizenship. Other Major Works of her are:The Human Condition (1958) Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (1958) Reflections on Little Rock (her controversial consideration of the emergent Black civil rights movement published in published in 1959) Between Past and Future(1961) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil(1963) On Revolution(1963) Men in Dark Times(1968) Reflections on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1970) Thinking and Moral Considerations (1971)

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Crisis of the Republic (1971) In the next years, she worked on her projected three-volume work, The Life of the Mind. Volumes 1 and 2 (on “Thinking” and “Willing”) were published posthumously. She died on December 4, 1975, having only just started work on the third and final volume, Judging. 3.

On Totalitarianism

Arendt’s first major work, published in 1951, is clearly a response to the devastating events of her own time – the rise of Nazi Germany and the catastrophic fate of European Jewry at its hands, the rise of Soviet Stalinism and its annihilation of millions of peasants and free-thinking intellectual, writers, artists, scientists and political activists. Arendt insisted that these manifestations of political evil could not be understood as mere extensions in scale or scope of already existing precedents, but rather that they represented a completely ‘novel form of government’, one built upon terror and ideological fiction. Where older tyrannies had used terror as an instrument for attaining or sustaining power, modern totalitarian regimes exhibited little strategic rationality in their use of terror. Rather, terror was no longer a means to a political end, but an end in itself. Its necessity was now justified by recourse to supposed laws of history (such as the inevitable triumph of the classless society) or nature (such as the inevitability of a war between ‘chosen’ and other ‘degenerate’ races). For Arendt, the totalitarian ideologies had the capacity to mobilize populations to do their bidding was because of the impact of the First World War, and the Great Depression, and the spread of revolutionary unrest. Moreover, the expansionism of imperialist capital and colonial suppression, and the usurpation of the state power by the bourgeoisie as an instrument by which to further its own sectional interests. These series of pathologies left the European people to accept a single, clear and unambiguous idea that would take away their woes and provide a clear path to them that would secure the future against insecurity and danger. Totalitarian ideologies offered just such answers, such as Marxist notion of history certainly unfolding in a specific way. This in turn led to the delegitimation of political institutions, and the weakening of the principles of citizenship and deliberative consensus that had been the heart of the democratic political enterprise. The rise of totalitarianism was thus to be understood in light of the accumulation of pathologies that had undermined the conditions of possibility for a viable public life that could unite citizens, while simultaneously preserving their liberty and uniqueness (a condition that Arendt referred to as “plurality”). (Note: I simplify the above two paragraphs into a small flowchart for better understanding) Series of Pathologies that people encountered during Arendt's time period (and before 1951 when she published this work) I World War, Great Depression, expansion of imperialist capital, colonial suppression, capitalism using State power for its personal interest etc.,

People amenable to accept a certain set of ideas that would provide a secured and dangerless future against these pathologies And Totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism, Fascism and Soviet Stalinism offering such ideas in the name of 'nature' (Fascism and Nazism) , 'history's mandate' (Soviet Stalinism i.e.,Marxism) and they were able to mobilize people the ideas that have been the heart of democratic systems getting demolished such as delegitimation of political institutions, and the weakening of the principles of citizenship and arriving consensus after deleberations etc.,

People loosing their ''plurality'' i.e, living a public life while at the same time preserving their liberty and uniqueness

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The Human Condition (or) Arendt's Conception of Modernity

The Human Condition (1958) is an account of the historical development of the situation of human existence, from the Ancient Greeks to modern Europe. Arendt aims at the possibilities of bringing the vita 2

active (active life) in the modern world. She defines the three activities – labor, work, and action – and describes four possible realms: the political, the social, the public, and the private. She then explains how the Ancient Greeks positioned each activity in each realm, and criticises the modern world from this standpoint. For Arendt, Ancient Greek life was divided into two realms: the public realm, in which political activity was performed, and the private realm, site of property and family life. It was in the public realm alone where as first expressed by Aristotle, true freedom could be gained through "great words and great deeds" as personal glory could be attained in the battlefield. In this respect Arendt noted that Athenian Democracy was not really the realm of the many, as it is commonly thought, but of the One, who through powerful words and deeds could leave his mark on the world and as this world was thought to be immortal, the man who would leave his mark in it would also pertain in its immortality. The private realm on the contrary, is the realm for necessity. It is located in the "shadowy interior of the household" which consisted of women, children and slaves. All the activities concerning the sustenance of human lives are operated here, including production, reproduction, economy, etc. Slaves, in this respect, were people whose lives were entirely ruled by necessity, both theirs and their masters. Violence is the tool to maintain a household which belongs to the head (oikonomon in Greek). Private affairs can be charming but never glorious and this is why they were naturally excluded from the public debate in the ancient Agora. Since the Roman Age, a third realm has come into being: the social. In relation to the other two, society is simply a collection of private needs in one entity and is therefore comparable to the household. Both the social and private therefore are realms of necessity, the need to sustain one's own body through labor (explained below) and that of their family. The public sphere in contrast starts where necessity ends and this is why the citizens of city-states would try to alleviate themselves from it as much as possible (often using slaves) in order to enter it. Once there, these citizens would debate on issues above and beyond everyday sustenance and bereft of personal or private interests. Topics would include the public affairs which concerned everyone such as education, war and law. Violence is totally excluded from this sphere where glory comes from one's successful persuasion of others with one's own reason and rhetorical power. As this Greek system of governance waned, so the meaning of political life got demoted to the concept of social life. This is evident in the distortion of Aristotle's definition of man as a "political animal" which was translated as "social animal" by Seneca and medieval writers, while the word "social" did not exist in ancient Greek vocabulary. In the same manner, starting with Plato, philosophy began to see itself as following the vita contemplativa and aiming to experience the eternal, outside and above the political sphere. The anlogy of the Cave in The Republic begins the tradition of political philosophy; here Plato describes the world of human affairs in terms of shadows and darkness, and instructs those who aspire to truth to turn away from it in favor of the “clear sky of eternal ideas.” This metaphysical hierarchy, theoria is placed above praxis. In introducing the term vita activa, Arendt aims to offer an alternative: attaining the immortal through a specific form of political life that is different from the social life that we all live by definition of being human. In doing so, she offers a stringent critique of traditional of political philosophy, and the dangers it presents to the political sphere as an autonomous domain of human practice. Explaining this is the subject of the book. Arendt points out that the "human condition" and "human nature" are not synonymous. She draws a distinction between them by explaining that, if humans were to colonize the moon or some other planetary body, they would live under new conditions. Their human nature, however – if there is such a thing – would remain intact. Human nature is located within human beings; the human condition is not. The Vita Activa: Labor, Work and Action For the purposes of better grasping the world in which the human beings labor, work, and act, Arendt differentiated between the "modern age" and the "modern world." The modern age began in the 17th century—as science fuelled the development of radical doubt—and ended at the beginning of the 20th century—with the almost complete automation of the workplace. Arendt wonders: How will people "act" that will make it possible to define the post-modern age? Will this this age build upon or will it be different

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from (and how will it be different from) the modern age which glorified labor and transformed the whole of society into a laboring society? To respond to these questions, Arendt's intellectual project requires thinking about and differentiating labor, work, and action. Grasping these concepts is critical for understanding her broader concept of the idea of work. Moreover, she arranges these activities in an ascending hierarchy of importance, and identifies the overturning of this hierarchy as central to the eclipse of political freedom and responsibility which, for her, has come to characterize the modern age. i. Labor: Humanity as Animal Laborans: Labor is that activity which corresponds to the biological processes and necessities of human existence, the practices which are necessary for the maintenance of life itself. Labor is distinguished by its never-ending character; it creates nothing of permanence, its efforts are quickly consumed, and must therefore be perpetually renewed so as to sustain life. In this aspect of its existence humanity is closest to the animals and so, in a significant sense, the least human (“What men share with all other forms of animal life was not considered to be human”). Indeed, Arendt refers to humanity in this mode as animal laborans. Because the activity of labor is commanded by necessity, the human being as laborer is the equivalent of the slave; labor is characterized by unfreedom. Arendt argues that it is precisely the recognition of labor as contrary to freedom, and thus to what is distinctively human, which underlay the institution of slavery amongst the ancient Greeks; it was the attempt to exclude labor from the conditions of human life. In view of this characterization of labor, Arendt is highly critical of Marx’s elevation of animal laborans to a position of primacy in his vision of the highest ends of human existence. Drawing on the Aristotelian distinction of the oikos (the private realm of the household) from the polis (the public realm of the political community), Arendt argues that matters of labor, economy and the like properly belong to the former, not the latter. The emergence of necessary labor, the private concerns of the oikos, into the public sphere (what Arendt calls “the rise of the social”) has for her the effect of destroying the properly political by subordinating the public realm of human freedom to the concerns mere animal necessity. The prioritization of the economic which has attended the rise of capitalism has for Arendt all but eclipsed the possibilities of meaningful political agency and the pursuit of higher ends which should be the proper concern of public life. ii. Work: Humanity as Homo Faber: The human condition of work is what Arendt calls "worldliness," that is, the creation of artificial things that are not part of nature but are the by-products of work as human beings give artificial shapes and forms to what nature produces. Take a table, for example. Because a table is not needed for survival, the production of a table is not labor. Instead, nature produces the tree, but a human being must envision the table one will build and, then, do violence to nature by cutting down the tree, sawing it into usable lumber, and fabricating the lumber into the table. The products of work, then, provide human beings an artificial world of things—Arendt calls these "artifices"—that are completely different from the surroundings nature provides. Furthermore, these artifices are more permanent and durable than are the lives and work of those producing these artifices. Moreover, the animal laborans doesn't "need" these things to survive; no, the animal laborans "wants" these artifices because they make life more pleasant and beautiful. As a "homo faber," then, human beings work "for the sake of" producing artifices that are more permanent and durable than themselves. Work is guided by the desired "end" and is that process whereby human beings use tools to transform nature into worldly objects—artifices—that make life more pleasant and beautiful. The homo faber knows "how to" but does not act "knowing what to do" because the homo faber is fabricating not doing. That is the human condition of work. The human condition—that into which every human is born—is that labor is required but work is not. One could make the choice to engage in only the amount of labor that would be required to earn enough money to provide for one's needs and to purchase objects that provide enjoyment...fabricated, of course, by the homo faber. After all, it logically follows, should one work knowing full well that the fruit of one's work has a limited "shelf life" or is left behind the moment one dies? For the most part, fabrications are obsolescent. Then, too, "They don't attach U-Hauls to a hearse." One could choose to engage in work for a variety of reasons, for example, to increase the pleasure or make one's life 4

more beautiful or, even, to produce artifices that would outlast one's life although how long those artifices will last is a matter of speculation but, as Arendt notes, use of these artifices—the longer one uses the table—decreases their durability. Considering all of those artifices left for future generations that have survived for more than a few generations is small indeed! Just look at all of the landfills that have increasingly sprung up in recent decades because previous landfills have no more room for all of the "debris" and "rubbish" people are throwing away. It would be truly absurd, in light of this, for anyone to believe that one's products of work will survive very long or past one's death. The human condition of work, then, while providing some semblance of durability and permanence, in all likelihood will meet the same end as the fruit of one's labor. Seeking immortality in labor—as an animal laborans—or work—as a homo faber—is a futile quest for humanity. It should be clear that work stands in clear distinction from labor in a number of ways. Firstly, whereas labor is bound to the demands of animality, biology and nature, work violates the realm of nature by shaping and transforming it according to the plans and needs of humans; this makes work a distinctly human (i.e. non-animal) activity. Secondly, because work is governed by human ends and intentions it is under humans’ sovereignty and control, it exhibits a certain quality of freedom, unlike labor which is subject to nature and necessity. Thirdly, whereas labor is concerned with satisfying the individual’s life-needs and so remains essentially a private affair, work is inherently public; it creates an objective and common world which both stands between humans and unites them. While work is not the mode of human activity which corresponds to politics, its fabrications are nonetheless the preconditions for the existence of a political community. The common world of institutions and spaces that work creates furnish the arena in which citizens may come together as members of that shared world to engage in political activity. In Arendt’s critique of modernity the world created by homo faber is threatened with extinction by the aforementioned “rise of the social.” The activity of labor and the consumption of its fruits, which have come to dominate the public sphere, cannot furnish a common world within which humans might pursue their higher ends. Labor and its effects are inherently impermanent and perishable, exhausted as they are consumed, and so do not possess the qualities of quasi-permanence which are necessary for a shared environment and common heritage which endures between people and across time. In industrial modernity “all the values characteristic of the world of fabrication – permanence, stability, durability…are sacrificed in favor of the values of life, productivity and abundance.” The rise of animal laborans threatens the extinction of homo faber, and with it comes the passing of those worldly conditions which make a community’s collective and public life possible (what Arendt refers to as “world alienation”). Arendt is at great pains to establish that the activity of homo faber does not equate with the realm of human freedom and so cannot occupy the privileged apex of the human condition. For work is still subject to a certain kind of necessity, that which arises from its essentially instrumental character. As technêandpoiesis the act is dictated by and subordinated to ends and goals outside itself; work is essentially a means to achieve the thing which is to be fabricated (be it a work of art, a building or a structure of legal relations) and so stands in a relation of mere purposiveness to that end. (Again it is Plato who stands accused of the instrumentalization of action, of its conflation with fabrication and subordination to an external teleology as prescribed by his metaphysical system). For Arendt, the activity of work cannot be fully free insofar as it is not an end in itself, but is determined by prior causes and articulated ends. iii. Action: Humanity as Zoon Politikon: Because no human being is exactly like another human being, the human condition of action is "natality"—birth—not mortality—death. Birth is what makes human beings different not death. This is how Production plurality not uniformity characterizes human birth −−−−−−−−−→ ↑ ↓ −−−−−−−−−→ death beings and how they act. Furthermore, as a new consumption generation of human beings is born into the world, its members introduce new forms of action into the world, not new forms of work, as capitalists hope and, not a continuing supply of labor, as Marx argued. Engaging in action, human beings supplant the action of previous generations. Possessing the 5

same basic needs as their forebears, the new generation must labor. But, as their "wants" change—as the artifices of previous generations' work begat new desires—the work performed in the new generation fabricates nature's products in new ways. These artifices not only introduce new products into the market but also new consumption, a "cycle" if you will, where human beings do violence to and destroy nature's products to satisfy their needs and wants. The human condition of action differs from that of labor and of work because the fruits of human action—“to act” through one's words and deeds—possess the possibility of immortality. Consider Socrates, for example. Nothing of his was ever published. Yet, his words and deeds—his work to seek the truth and to apply it to life in Athenian democracy—have lived more than two millennia beyond Socrates' death sentence. Jesus, too. A failure, in so far as he was judged by the standards of his fellow Jews and imperial agents of Rome, Jesus' words and deeds—his work on behalf of his Father in Heaven—have lived more than two millennia beyond his crucifixion. It is through the human condition of action, then, that human beings can achieve immortality. Similar to the human condition of work, action requires making a choice. Yes, one must labor as an animal laborans to provide for basic needs. That's simply the servitude demanded by the human condition. But, if a human being is to act, then one must make the choice to work as a homo faber not at making artifices—material things—but at making the truth—immaterial ideas—evident in action, that is, through one's words and deeds. Only these have the possibility of becoming immortal. The ancient Greeks understood this well. Differentiating between the private and public realm, the ancient Greeks viewed the household as the private realm wherein are provided all of the basic needs of life. The household was not just a building—what is today referred to as a "home"—but all of the property which produced everything needed for survival. This would include the home, yes, but also the farm, the animals, as well as all of the other tools and nature's products that made survival possible. In this sense, the household was where man labored and worked. However, for the householder to achieve happiness required the liberating himself—to be a "free man"—from the servitude of having to provide for the necessities of life. This not only included himself but also all of those for whom the householder bore responsibility, for example, spouse, children, other family members, slaves, pets, animals. That is, happiness required the householder to free himself from "labor" and from "work" as well. That is why slavery figured prominently in ancient Greece. Slaves were defeated enemies owned by their conquerors. Prior to being conquered, however, many slaves were highly educated and cultured; hence, they could be quite valuable to householders. For example, slaves could educate children and manage the household. Even more importantly, slaves could work by fabricating from nature artifices that would increase the ease and comfort and, perhaps, the length of life. But, what is crucial here is to note how slaves freed the householder from having to labor and to work so that the householder could immerse himself in public affairs where he could act in ways that would demonstrate his excellence. It is the household which defined the householder's place in the world and was the precondition for a public life. Having freed himself from labor and work, the householder could now enjoy the good life, that is, to act through one's words and deeds for the benefit of "an idiot". In this way, the householder became an "individual," someone who acted on one's own demonstrating human excellence in word and deed not in the private sphere of the household but in the public sphere of "an idiot". For Arendt, all of this stands in stark opposition to the modern world. The disintegration of the family—the privacy and providing for basic needs which the ancient Greeks reserved to the household—and its absorption into society provides insight into how human beings act in the modern world:  unnatural conformism: despite pluralism, human beings seek to look like and talk like one another;  socially acceptable and politically correct behavior replace authentic action as the foremost mode of

human relationship;  those who do not abide by society's rules are labeled asocial, abnormal "idiots";

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 society is ruled by "an invisible hand" which assigns no personal responsibility to human beings only to

institutions, that is "rule by a bureaucracy of nobody"; and,  no authentic human excellence is demonstrated as job holders labor simply to provide for necessities to

sustain life and maybe a few creature comforts. The outcome is, as Arendt notes: the people inhabiting this society believe themselves to be free but they are enslaved to the human condition of labor. The people inhabiting this society believe themselves happy and comfortable, but they work to produce "throw away" items that have no permanence or durability. They don't know the human condition of work but exist within a continuous cycle of production and consumption wherein they not only destroy and do violence to nature in order to satisfy all of their wants but their fabrications wreak violence upon nature a second time by creating vast landfills, increasing pollution and cancer, as well as other forms of devastation to the planet. All the while, the inhabitants of this society believe themselves to be free and autonomous individuals. What they've never grasped individually or collectively, however, is the fundamental importance of the third aspect of the human condition, namely, action. “…freedom…is actually the reason that men live together in political organisations at all. Without it, political life as such would be meaningless. The raison d’être of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action.” - Hannah Arendt

Critique of Marx: One of Karl Marx's primary assertions, namely, that labor (animal laborans) not thought (animal rationales) distinguishes human beings from other nonhuman animals, provides a seductive but false way out of the trap rendering labor and work futile, according to Arendt. Certainly, labor is a "natural force"—the body's power—accounting for human productivity. No one would argue that. However, for Marx, labor is what makes the human being useful for society as one's labor transforms nature's products into consumable items that satisfy society's needs. That is why Marx argues "labor creates man," that is, to labor is "to act." Arendt asks: Is labor what makes human beings useful? Is the category "useful" even helpful to discuss the worth of human beings? Furthermore, Arendt maintains that labor is not a curse—the "wages of sin" as reported in the second creation narrative found in the Book of Genesis—but a blessing or joy uniting human beings with nature's cycle. Just as the sun rises, so human laborers toil; as the sun sets, so too, human laborers rest; and, as day turns to night, labor turns to consumption. According to this view, labor is how human beings unite with their natural origins and source. This can also serve to explain why the "midnight shift" feels so unnatural to many laborers. Arendt believes Marx's assertion about labor faulty, reflecting a God-less view of the human being and of both labor and work as well. For her, Marx turned labor into a "system" that makes labor the source of all productivity. But, she observes, the products of that system are annihilated by the human beings who consume them, leaving no trace of productive humanity behind. Yes, she would agree, the grain does disappear in bread and, yes, a tree disappears into a table. However, whereas human beings need bread to survive, they do not need tables to survive. The table reveals something more permanent and durable than bread. It is a "work" of the homo faber revealing something about the fabricator not a "product" of the animal laborans. These products make life more beautiful and good; they possess worth beyond consumer products like bread. In contrast to Marx's interpretation, Arendt believes what happened is that the Industrial Revolution replaced the craftsman (homo faber) with the laborer (animal laborans. The result is that the latter soon began to evaluate the worth of "things" in terms of their value not as works of art that add beauty and goodness to life but as consumer goods whose natural fate was to be consumed. Furthermore, specialization and the division of labor in the factory replaced craftsmen with laborers with the outcome that the modern age's emancipation of labor ended up not ushering in a Golden Age of freedom for laborers but has forced all humankind to labor under the yoke of necessity, what Weber called the "Iron Cage".

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Taken to its logical conclusion, Marx's assertion that inherent in the biological cycle is toil and trouble from which one generation is released by death and regenerates itself in natality, suggests that gross consumption will eventually characterize a laboring society. Laborers produce the "things" they consume; laborers then must produce more things which they will also consume. As the generations pass, human beings commit greater and ever greater violence against nature by destroying its products to produce things to be consumed. Life is consumption; but, for human beings to consume, life is production. Life, then, is to labor. In contrast to Marx, Arendt believes that labor and work provide the fundamental precondition for humans beings to engage in "action" and this third element of the human condition is what differentiates human beings from nonhuman animals. 5.

On Revolution

Arendt disputes both liberal and Marxist interpretations of modern political revolutions (such as the French and American). Against liberals, she disputes the claim that these revolutions were primarily concerned with the establishment of a limited government that would make space for individual liberty beyond the reach of the state. Against Marxist interpretations of the French Revolution, she disputes the claim that it was driven by the “social question,” a popular attempt to overcome poverty and exclusion by the many against the few who monopolized wealth in the ancient regime. Rather, Arendt claims, what distinguishes these modern revolutions is that they exhibited the exercise of fundamental political capacities – that of individuals acting together, on the basis of their mutually agreed common purposes, in order to establish a tangible public space of freedom. Yet Arendt sees both the French and American revolutions as ultimately failing to establish an enduring political space in which the on-going activities of shared deliberation, decision and coordinated action could be exercised. In the case of the French Revolution, the subordination of political freedom to matters of managing welfare (the “social question”) reduces political institutions to administering the distribution of goods and resources (matters that belong properly in the oikos i.e., household, house, or family in Ancient Greek dealing as they do with the production and reproduction of human existence). Meanwhile, the American Revolution evaded this fate, and by means of the Constitution managed to found a political society on the basis of comment assent. Yet she saw it only as a partial and limited success. America failed to create an institutional space in which citizens could participate in government, in which they could exercise in common those capacities of free expression, persuasion and judgement that defined political existence. The average citizen, while protected from arbitrary exercise of authority by constitutional checks and balances, was no longer a participant “in judgement and authority,” and so became denied the possibility of exercising his/her political capacities. 6.

Thinking and Judging

Arendt’s concern with thinking and judgement as political faculties stretches back to her earliest works, and were addressed subsequently in a number of essays written during the 1950s and 1960s. However, in the last phase of her work, she turned to examine these faculties in a concerted and systematic way. Unfortunately, her work was incomplete at the time of her death – only the first two volumes of the projected 3-volume work, Life of the Mind, had been completed. However, the posthumously published Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy delineate what might reasonably be supposed as her “mature” reflections on political judgement. 8

In the first volume of Life of the Mind, dealing with the faculty of thinking, Arendt is at pains to distinguish it from “knowing.” She draws upon Kant’s distinction between knowing or understanding (Verstand) and thinking or reasoning (Vernunft). Understanding yields positive knowledge – it is the quest for knowable truths. Reason or thinking, on the other hand, drives us beyond knowledge, persistently posing questions that cannot be answered from the standpoint of knowledge, but which we nonetheless cannot refrain from asking. For Arendt, thinking amounts to a quest to understand the meaning of our world, the ceaseless and restless activity of questioning that which we encounter. The value of thinking is not that it yields positive results that can be considered settled, but that it constantly returns to question again and again the meaning that we give to experiences, actions and circumstances. This, for Arendt, is intrinsic to the exercise of political responsibility – the engagement of this faculty that seeks meaning through a relentless questioning (including self-questioning). It was precisely the failure of this capacity that characterized the “banality” of Eichmann’s propensity to participate in political evil. The cognate faculty of judgement has attracted most attention is her writing on, deeply interconnected with thinking, yet standing distinct from it. Her theory of judgement is widely considered as one of the most original parts of her oeuvre, and certainly one of the most influential in recent years. Arendt’s concern with political judgement, and its crisis in the modern era, is a recurrent theme in her work. As noted earlier, Arendt bemoans the “world alienation” that characterizes the modern era, the destruction of a stable institutional and experiential world that could provide a stable context in which humans could organize their collective existence. Moreover, it will be recalled that in human action Arendt recognizes (for good or ill) the capacity to bring the new, unexpected, and unanticipated into the world. This quality of action means that it constantly threatens to defy or exceed our existing categories of understanding or judgement; precedents and rules cannot help us judge properly what is unprecedented and new. So for Arendt, our categories and standards of thought are always beset by their potential inadequacy with respect to that which they are called upon to judge. However, this aporia of judgement reaches a crisis point in the 20th century under the repeated impact of its monstrous and unprecedented events. The mass destruction of two World Wars, the development of technologies which threaten global annihilation, the rise of totalitarianism, and the murder of millions in the Nazi death camps and Stalin’s purges have effectively exploded our existing standards for moral and political judgement. Tradition lies in shattered fragments around us and “the very framework within which understanding and judging could arise is gone.” The shared bases of understanding, handed down to us in our tradition, seem irretrievably lost. Arendt confronts the question: on what basis can one judge the unprecedented, the incredible, the monstrous which defies our established understandings and experiences? If we are to judge at all, it must now be “without preconceived categories and…without the set of customary rules which is morality;” it must be “thinking without a banister.” In order to secure the possibility of such judgement Arendt must establish that there in fact exists “an independent human faculty, unsupported by law and public opinion, that judges anew in full spontaneity every deed and intent whenever the occasion arises.” This for Arendt comes to represent “one of the central moral questions of all time, namely…the nature and function of human judgement.” It is with this goal and this question in mind that the work of Arendt’s final years converges on the “unwritten political philosophy” of Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Arendt eschews “determinate judgement,” judgement that subsumes particulars under a universal or rule that already exists. Instead, she turns to Kant’s account of “reflective judgement,” the judgement of a particular for which no rule or precedent exists, but for which some judgement must nevertheless be arrived at. What Arendt finds so valuable in Kant’s account is that reflective judgement proceeds from the particular with which it is confronted, yet nevertheless has a universalizing moment – it proceeds from the operation of a capacity that is shared by all beings possessed of the faculties of reason and understanding. Kant requires us to judge from this common standpoint, on the basis of what we share with all others, by setting aside our own egocentric and private concerns or interests. The faculty of reflective judgement requires us to set aside considerations which are purely private (matters of personal liking and private interest) and instead judge

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from the perspective of what we share in common with others (i.e. must be disinterested). Arendt places great weight upon this notion of a faculty of judgement that “thinks from the standpoint of everyone else.” This “broadened way of thinking” or “enlarged mentality” enables us to “compare our judgement not so much with the actual as rather with the merely possible judgement of others, and [thus] put ourselves in the position of everybody else…” For Arendt, this “representative thinking” is made possible by the exercise of the imagination – as Arendt beautifully puts it, “To think with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one’s imagination to go visiting.” “Going visiting” in this way enables us to make individual, particular acts of judgement which can nevertheless claim a public validity. In this faculty, Arendt find a basis upon which a disinterested and publicly-minded form of political judgement could subvene, yet be capable of tackling the unprecedented circumstances and choices that the modern era confronts us with. 8. Arendt's Conception of Citizenship Arendt's conception of citizenship can be reconstructed around two themes: (1) The public sphere, and (2) Political agency and collective identity. (1) Citizenship and the Public Sphere: For Arendt the public sphere comprises two distinct but interrelated dimensions. 1. The first is the space of appearance, a space of political freedom and equality which comes into being whenever citizens act in concert by means of speech and persuasion. 2. The second is the common world, a shared and public world of human institutions which separates us from nature and which provides a relatively permanent and durable context for our activities. Both dimensions are essential to the practice of citizenship, the former providing the spaces where it can flourish, the latter providing the stable background from which public spaces of action and deliberation can arise. For Arendt the reactivation of citizenship in the modern world depends upon both the creation of numerous spaces of appearance and the recovery of a common, shared world in which individuals can disclose their identities and establish relations of reciprocity and solidarity. There are three features of the public sphere and of the sphere of politics in general that are central to Arendt's conception of citizenship. These are, a. its artificial or constructed quality: Arendt always stressed that the public life and of political activities in general are artificial i.e, they are man-made and constructed rather than natural or based on the realization of the inherent traits of human nature. She regarded this artificiality as something to be celebrated rather than deplored. The stress on the artificiality of politics has a number of important consequences.  The principle of political equality does not rest on a theory of natural rights or on some natural condition but they have been secured to the individuals only by democratic political institutions.  One's ethnic, religious, or racial identity was irrelevant to one's identity as a citizen, and that it should never be made the basis of membership in a political community.  It permitted the establishment of relations of civility and solidarity among citizens. b. its spatial quality: Political activities are located in a public space where citizens are able to meet one another, exchange their opinions and debate their differences, and search for some collective solution to their problems. Politics, for Arendt, is a matter of people sharing a common world and a common space of appearance so that public concerns can emerge and be articulated from different perspectives. In her view, it is not enough to have a collection of private individuals voting separately and anonymously according to their private opinions. Rather, these individuals must be able to see and talk to one another in public, to meet

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in a public-political space, so that their differences as well as their commonalities can emerge and become the subject of democratic debate. c. the distinction between public and private interests: According to Arendt, political activity is not a means to an end, but an end in itself; one does not engage in political action to promote one's welfare, but to realize the principles intrinsic to political life, such as freedom, equality, justice, and solidarity. In a late essay entitled “Public Rights and Private Interests” (PRPI) Arendt argued that our public interest as citizens is quite distinct from our private interest as individuals. The public interest is not the sum of private interests, nor their highest common denominator, nor even the total of enlightened self-interests. In fact, it has little to do with our private interests, since it concerns the world that lies beyond the private self-interest. (2) Political Agency and Collective Identity: Arendt's participatory conception of citizenship provides the best starting point for addressing both the question of the constitution of collective identity and that concerning the conditions for the exercise of effective political agency. With respect to the first claim, it is important to note that one of the crucial questions at stake in political discourse is the creation of a collective identity, a “we” to which we can appeal when faced with the problem of deciding among alternative courses of action. Political action and discourse are, in this respect, essential to the constitution of collective identities. This process of identity-construction, however, is never given once and for all and is never unproblematic. Rather, it is a process of constant renegotiation and struggle, a process in which actors articulate and defend competing conceptions of cultural and political identity. Hence Arendt had a participatory conception of citizenship. With respect to the second claim, concerning the question of political agency, it is important to stress the connection that Arendt establishes between political action, understood as the active engagement of citizens in the public realm, and the exercise of effective political agency. This connection between action and agency is one of the central contributions of Arendt's participatory conception of citizenship. According to Arendt, the active engagement of citizens in the determination of the affairs of their community provides them not only with the experience of public freedom and public happiness, but also with a sense of political agency and efficacy, the sense, in Thomas Jefferson's words, of being “participators in government.” In her view only the sharing of power that comes from civic engagement and common deliberation can provide each citizen with a sense of effective political agency. As an alternative to a system of representation based on bureaucratic parties and state structures, Arendt proposed a federated system of councils through which citizens could effectively determine their own political affairs. For Arendt, it is only by means of direct political participation, that is, by engaging in common action and collective deliberation, that citizenship can be reaffirmed and political agency effectively exercised. 7.

Criticisms and Controversies It is worth noting some of the prominent criticisms that have been levelled against Arendt’s work.

Primary amongst these is her reliance upon a rigid distinction between the “private” and “public,” the oikos and the polis, to delimit the specificity of the political realm. Feminists have pointed out that the confinement of the political to the realm outside the household has been part and parcel of the domination of politics by men, and the corresponding exclusion of women’s experiences of subjection from legitimate politics. Marxists have likewise pointed to the consequences of confining matters of material distribution and economic management to the extra-political realm of the oikos, thereby delegitimating questions of material social justice, poverty, and exploitation from political discussion and contestation. It may be said that Arendt’s understanding of political life misses the fact that politics is intrinsically concerned with what counts as a legitimate public concern.

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Arendt has also come under criticism for her overly enthusiastic endorsement of the Athenian polis as an exemplar of political freedom, to the detriment of modern political regimes and institutions. Likewise, the emphasis she places upon direct citizen deliberation as synonymous with the exercise of political freedom excludes representative models, and might be seen as unworkable in the context of modern mass societies, with the delegation, specialization, expertise and extensive divisions of labor needed to deal with their complexity. Her elevation of politics to the apex of human good and goals and granting other modes of human action and self-realization to a subordinate status has also been challenged. There are also numerous criticisms that have been leveled at her unorthodox readings of other thinkers, and her attempts to synthesize conflicting philosophical viewpoints in attempt to develop her own position (for example, her attempt to mediate Aristotle’s account of experientially-grounded practical judgement (phronesis) with Kant’s transcendental-formal model). All these, and other criticisms notwithstanding, Arendt remains one of the most original, challenging and influential political thinkers of the 20th century, and her work will no doubt continue to provide inspiration for political philosophy as we enter the 21st.

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