1. The
Human Condition concludes with Arendt's analysis of world alienation. She
clearly believes that we face the degradation of the potential richness of
human experience and higher capability. The rise of the social and its hegemony
narrows the scope of the public realm (as physical space, as a multiplicity of
perspectives and as an agenda of pre-occupations) and the possibilities for
authentic action within it. Arendt was prescient in predicting a future
lifeworld dominated by bureaucracy, consumption and an obsessive preoccupation
with life and intimacy. This lifeworld moves to the rhythms of regulation,
behaviour, function and consumption. For Arendt, this is a disaster because
action is the fullest expression of freedom and meaning. It finds its highest
realisation in politics and the public realm. Admittedly the outlook is not
promising but, for Arendt, the stakes are very high indeed and she has not
abandoned hope. Seeking a way beyond this impasse she turns her attention to
the revolutionary political tradition. It was Arendt's view that this tradition
had been distorted by a Marxian hegemony. However, she refused to interpret
revolution on the paradigm of necessity as an inevitable outcome of economic
forces (by the way, this was not Marx's view). On the contrary, for her
revolution was an exemplification of the paradigm of freedom. It signifies a
rebirth of action and the public realm. It was therefore necessary to resurrect
a meaningful tradition of political revolution and answer the fundamental
question: how can the modern phenomena of revolution remain true to its
originating political spirit. Her controversial contention was that
the original political passion present in the 18th century democratic
revolutions did not survive their initial success. In France the revolutionary
aspiration to freedom succumbed to the claim of necessity in the form of the
"social question”. This is the problem of mass poverty. America avoided
the problem of poverty only for its political passion to be deflected into economics:
it failed to provide institutional arrangements that would allow the original
aspiration to freedom to be enlisted in an enduring way. Arendt
wants to bring the lessons of the revolutionary tradition to the present, to
bring these revolutionary jewels to the surface and spell out their
contemporaneity. You will recall that she takes over Walter Benjamin’s critique
of progressive philosophy of history and its emphasis on the practical function
of historical memory, of a recall which brings the perspective of contemporary
cultural needs into collision with episodes of the past in a way that might
ignite the present.
2 For Arendt,
revolution is the "event" which breaks the chains of necessity and
the modern predominance of life processes. Revolution exemplifies her paradigm
of freedom. It is a brief time/space hiatus between the "no longer"
and the "not yet", where humans demonstrate their capacity to break
with the past, to make a new beginning and experiment with real innovation. We
owe our modern understanding of the notion "revolution" to quite
recent events. Originally its political meaning involved the idea of revolving
back to or restoration of a preordained ideal arrangement (OR42). Only with the
course of the American and French events from 1776 does the idea of revolution
acquire all its contemporary connotations. At this time it became quite
impossible for revolutionary leaders to sustain their initial illusions that
they were involved in some simple restoration of earlier institutions or rights
subsequently ignored or fallen into disuse. For the first time the "social
question" of mass poverty and deprivation enters the revolutionary agenda.
This is no longer posed as a question of nature but of avoidable suffering
(OR22). The sheer force and violence of this mass entry on to the revolutionary
stage made it appear that events had assumed a sort of irresistibility.
Observers were fooled into thinking they were witnesses to a process of
historical necessity (OR52-53).
3. The
historically unprecedented task is a new one of founding an entirely new
political body. Its novelty consists in the subordination of violence to the
establishment of a new arrangement that is more than mere change: it projects
the creation of a public space whose goal is freedom for all (OR35). One of the
features of Arendt's reconstruction of the revolutionary tradition was her
resuscitation of the revolutionary credentials of the American Revolution. This
revitalisation rests largely on her contention that 'the greatest event in
every revolution is the act of foundation' (OR222). In this light, the focus of
our understanding of revolution undergoes a decisive shift from the drama of
historical rupture with its typical destruction and violence to the creative
act that establishes a framework for a new public domain. More than the romance
of the new beginning, Arendt understands the foundation not merely as novel
creative act but as institution, as the will to permanence materialised in
institutional forms that so preoccupied ancient lawgivers. It is this new
emphasis that leads her to find a contradiction at the heart of the
revolutionary idea. As well as exhilaration in the creative act of beginning,
the act of foundation demands an equally firm grasp of the need for stability
and durability (OR223). If the exhilaration of creation is to produce more than
a moment of intoxication, the creative act must give rise to public forms that
allow the spirit to be domesticated as the basis for constant renewal and
regeneration. The complexity of the revolutionary spirit is constituted by
these two irreconcilable elements (OR222-23). If the revolutionary spirit is to
give shape to a durable public space and institutionalised participatory
freedom, then somehow a synthesis must be achieved between durability and
innovation. That this synthesis was not achieved in even the most favourable
circumstances of the American Revolution is one of the tragic conclusions of
Arendt's survey of the revolutionary tradition. Ultimately not even in America
could the revolutionary spirit find its appropriate institutions (OR280). While
this could lead us to despair or at least to condemn the modern failure of
political sensibility, Arendt draws strength from the irrepressibility of human
action and its inexhaustible capacity to engender new beginnings. The
historical record is no refutation of the revolutionary idea but a constant
reminder that humans periodically feel compelled to return to this challenge.
She points to the series of failed revolutionary attempts that initially
brought forth spontaneous participatory council movements as at the time of the
Paris Commune, the workers Soviets in Russia in 1905 and 1917 and as late as
the Hungarian revolution in 1956. We might go on to add 1989 to her list. In
times of historical rupture the people seem to have an intuitive grasp of the
dimensions of the task and a capacity for surprises. This Arendtian faith in
people’s general capacity remains at least one reason for hope.
4. There is an
organic link between this idea of revolution and that of freedom. However
inhospitable the historical conditions Arendt maintains that human beings are
free agents whose actions and choices are never wholly determined by either
their historical situation nor by their natural biological constitution. In a
climate of modern determinisms and increased emphasis on human conditionedness
in its various economic, sociological or psychological forms, Arendt reiterates
that humans are still free to choose. Whether they act in accordance with
principles or obey the prompting of their conditioned impulses, men must be
attributed with the maximum degree of freedom and responsibility. This
irreducible free agency means that revolution remains a permanent option.
Revolution is therefore Arendt's paradigm of freedom. Here the human capacity
for innovation, to break with the past and make a new beginning is most
dramatically demonstrated.
5. Yet, while
there is clearly an organic link between freedom and revolution we need to
understand their complex inter-articulation. As Arendt sees it, the former is
both the condition of the latter and its highest expression. While we typically
associate the idea of revolution with that of a new beginning we should not
simply equate liberation with freedom. Liberation is a negative condition: it
may be the condition for freedom but the intention to liberation is not
identical with the desire for freedom; it may only indicate a will to remove
certain constraints (OR29). Thus liberation and freedom are not the same.
Arendt really works with two notions of freedom. The first is the fundamental
human capacity for initiation that she views as a pre-political human
disposition. She identifies this capacity with the human condition of Natality. Humans come into the world as a
new beginning, unique, unrepeatable beings who possess an immanent spontaneity
that means their future action always remain unpredictable. Another of her
favorite lines was the one from Augustine that she employed at the end of the
Origins of Totalitarianism. They signify the rebirth of historical hope in
the very culmination of her story of the darkest historical night of the holocaust,
"that a new beginning be made man was created" (OT479). Yet, what
birth begins only action can bring to fruition. While birth individuates
biologically, it does not realise this existentially. To be fully realised,
potential uniqueness of birth must be actualized through a "second
birth" where action manifests that uniqueness. This natality as a
manifestation of the undeterminedness essential to humanity is vital. However,
it is only a bridge to, and not the main thrust of, her concept of freedom. One
could say that this human disposition is the gift of freedom but this in itself
does not make humanity free. We only become free when we act with others. The
fullest expression of freedom is experienced in action within a public context.
As Arendt puts it:
Whether I
enjoy freedom or suffer the reverse depends upon my intercourse with my fellow
men and not on my intercourse with myself. Men can only be free with reference
to another, only, that is, in the fields of politics and of the things they do:
it is only in these spheres that they come to realise that freedom is something
positive
6. The
essential human spontaneity only becomes freedom when it takes a worldly
historical shape, when it generates a public space where action can be seen and
evaluated by all. Arendt acknowledges that such worldly shape of freedom has
only seldom been realised, rarely unfolded its full virtuousity and always very
fragile (Freedom and Slavery 216). She argues that freedom in this second
strong political sense is co-eval with the rise of the Greek political state.
Thus the very rational for politics in this society was the realisation of a
domain of free action. Freedom is not one amongst the many problems of politics
but the very reason why men live together at all (BP&P146). The realisation
of freedom in this sense of a public sphere required the conquest of a natural
necessity that otherwise hemmed in human life on all sides. The Greek word for
action ((archein) means to initiate something new. It has connotations of
leading and finally controlling. Implicit in this understanding of action is
the sense that only a man that is already a leader can initiate. Thus in the
beginning freedom presupposed a radical separation between public and private;
it referred to the male status and presupposed a man who was free from the
cares and necessities of the household, who had slaves at his
call(Freedom&Slavery208-9). Only he could become a political actor.
7. Arendt is
primarily concerned to resuscitate the generally overlooked political meaning
of freedom. Her argument is that inner freedom, the freedom of thought, of the
will, of the private realm into which one may escape as into an inward space,
all those dimensions that we typically associate with modern liberal freedom,
these are later products of western historical estrangement from the public
sphere. The main point is not just that these modern notions of freedom that we
might collectively call inner or private freedom are a late flowering. More
importantly, they are derivative and would make no sense at all if the western
tradition had not first experienced freedom as a tangible worldly reality.
8. In this
political form, freedom assumes the form of intercourse with peers in a common
space. Freedom is materialised as action in the form of words and deeds. To go
back to our original condition of natality, it is action that reveals the self
as both unitary and unique. It is action that says who we are, that provides
human life with the stamp of individual meaning. However, to reveal himself,
the actor must appear and this implies a public space with viewers. This is
vital for Arendt. In their interior singularity the individual cannot be known.
The heart of the individual is always dark and it is impossible to be sure even
of one's own motives. In the light of day, motives always seem mere appearances
behind which lurk ulterior motives such as hypocrisy and deceit (OR96). Of
course, this was the very reason Arendt wanted to exclude motives from public
consideration and concentrate on action and the principles manifest in it.
Action requires a public space where it is assimilated and evaluated by an
audience of peers. Only by emerging from the darkness of self through public
action does the individual manifest their concrete particularity. And not only
this: clearly in Arendt's mind, an action in the presence of others is an
interaction. Thus, action assures not only the revelation of individual
particularity but of plurality at the same time.
9. Arendt's
contention is that the modern concept of freedom takes its bearing from the
alienation of freedom from politics. From the 17th century not only did
politics and freedom not co-incide but freedom was increasingly understood as
freedom from politics (P&P149). From this time, the deep mistrust of an
absolutist political power exercised over life and goods meant that freedom
became identified with restraint on that power. The task of liberal government
becomes the security of the private sphere. The world alienation that we have
already noted elsewhere is manifest here as is the pronounced subjectivist turn
of the modern concept of freedom. This modern freedom is radically anti-worldly
in a twofold sense. It implies not just the retreat from the public realm and
others but also the liberation from the self as a locus of worldly desires and
intentions. Arendt traces the source of this latter dimension of modern freedom
as liberation from the self back to Augustine and the Christian tradition. This
already reflected the loss of the ancient political freedom of the polis.
Augustine focused on the will as an organ of self-liberation. This allowed that
the individual might be a slave in the world and yet free at the same time in
virtue of a will that permits the transcendence of a hostile and alien world. Arendt
insists that this focus on the freedom of will was inherently anti-political.
The idea that the self could be in bondage to itself in the form of its own
unwilled desires leads to the desire for liberation from the self--and from
other selves-- that can only come when the self retreats into their own inner
sanctum in the activity of thought alone.
10. The
subjectivist turn in the modern concept of freedom is also amply demonstrated
in the metamorphosis of freedom into a philosophical question. This is most
forcefully expressed in early modern philosophy where freedom was understood
largely outside the realm of politics altogether. The metaphysical problem of
freedom and necessity now takes pride of place. Even more fateful consequences
follow from the equation of freedom with the human capacity to will. Afterall,
it was impossible that the concept of freedom could completely lose all its
political connotations. However, as a result of the philosophical shift in the
paradigm of freedom from action to willing, political freedom was conceived in
terms of the notion of a sovereign will. The modern idea of sovereignty stems
from the ideal of a free will that is independent of all others and ultimately
prevails against them. The model here is the divine will and its sovereignty is
an absolute expressed in laws that must be obeyed. Arendt holds this doctrine
at least partly responsible for a hideous distortion of modern political
thinking that has equated power with command, and substituted will for consent,
unity for plurality and a single interest for the conflict of opinions. For
Arendt, sovereignty and freedom are always at odds. Man is free but not
sovereign because the latter always violates the freedom of others and is the
death of plurality. In Rousseau this culminated in an identification of freedom
with indivisible sovereign power in the form of the general will (BP&P
164). This identification necessarily expunges all plurality and diversity. It
leads to "democratic" tyranny and the death of politics as a public
space for multiple perspectives, free words and deeds. Arendt argues that an
adequate concept of political freedom must be disconnected altogether from the
phenomena of the will. This is not to say that intentions and motives are not
an irreducible ingredient of politics. It just means they are not its essence.
Arendt believes that an action is truly free only to the extent that it
transcends both subjective motives and intended goals (BP&P151).
11. Arendt asserts that political
institutions are manifestations of the living power of the people. Power is
never the property of an individual but of individuals acting in concert: it is
always a function of numbers and collectives whereas sovereign violence has to
make do with implements. The political notion of being “in power” implies the
public support that empowers leaders to act on its behalf. It is easy to equate
power and violence, and typically they appear mixed and rarely in a pure form.
However, the sudden evaporation of power, even when government holds a monopoly
of violence, as we have seen repeatedly in recent times from 1989 to the Arab
Spring or the so-called “Umbrella revolution”, reveals how deceptive
appearances can be. From this Arendt derives a key positive insight. Power is not primarily a means but an
end that derives from the free character of the initial concert. This more
substantial constitutive power always remains the primary and predominant
factor, while acts of political violence, however momentarily triumphant, are
merely surface and secondary phenomenon.To understand why this is important I
must briefly reconstruct Arendt's view of the meaning of a free action.
12. In so far
as action is guided by a future aim, this is a function of intellect in the
form of judgement not of will. The will is merely the servant of judgement that
calls upon it to dictate action. But even this power of command is not a matter
of freedom. The capacity of the will to command is a product of strength or
weakness. However, if the freedom of action is not a product of the dictates of
will nor is it the product of the guidance of intellect that always only
precedes action. Both are vital in the execution of particular actions but they
are too subjective to inspire in the way that a free act does. For Arendt, it
is a principle that generates the freedom of action by inspiring from without.
Principles like honour, glory, equality, virtue, excellence are general
principles, according to which we judge particular goals. What is vital for
Arendt here is that unlike judgement, which precedes action and the will, which
initiates it, "the inspiring principle becomes fully manifest only in the
performing act itself" (BP&P152). While both the validity of judgement
and the strength of will are exhausted in the execution of the particular act,
the principle which inspired the action is inexhaustible in its repeatability
and universal in its validity. For Arendt, the integrality of principle to free
action is ultimately confirmed by time. As the distance between oneself and the
particular act increases, its power over us depends less on purposes or even
consequences than on the degree to which it manifests an immanently inspiring
principle. The only limitation upon principle is its identity with action and
the need for this action to be sustained.
13. Principles
can only inspire as long as action lasts or at least can be remembered. While
Arendt believes the advancement of human purposes is the irreducible material
of politics, its essence is ultimately not so much achieving goals but ongoing
action that manifests greatness and validates universal values . Action is
always faced by the pressure of irrepressible necessity. In modernity, this
pressure is magnified by the hegemony of social function, rules and behaviour;
all constrain the scope of action. For Arendt, the fragility of action
reinforces the need for political freedom to have partisans. She can be such a
partisan by resurrecting the memories of freedom in the form of those few
inspirational episodes in the revolutionary tradition.
14. Now it is
time to draw up some sort of preliminary balance sheet in respect to Arendt's
ideas. She rejects the view that economic growth can lead to freedom. The rise
of the social and its continued expansion will not lead to an expansion of the
domain of action. Her view is that all trends seem to lead in the other
direction. Increased abundance is associated with a narrowing of human
experience and a societal devaluing of those activities making no or little
contribution to the increased rhythms of the life-process. Whether this linkage
between concentrated economic abundance and the contraction of freedom is
correct is open to question. It could be argued that the sixties radicalism of
the New Left was sustained by the great post World War II economic boom that
lasted until the early seventies. In late interviews, Arendt acknowledged the
New Left of the sixties in terms of her paradigm of free action. She views it
as a political movement inspired by a renewed moral focus. We have already seen
that Arendt does not expect civil courage to emerge out of poverty whose focus
is always life. The courage and participatory idealism demanded by her concept
of politics clearly does have material conditions. However, she side-steps the
question of its modern relation to economic prosperity. This is similar to the
strategy she employed in explaining the emancipatory contribution made by
working class movement to 19th century politics. She argued strongly for the
connection between the activity of labouring and the condition of the masses
(both characterised by loneliness), and the debilitating impact of the
consumerist dreams of labour on the prospects of authentic political action in
the modern context. She was, nevertheless, compelled to acknowledge the
enormous political contribution made by the working class to the European
revolutionary tradition. Arendt explains this positive contribution by
interpreting the working class movement as a predominantly political movement
of a formerly excluded class. This is important to Arendt because, as we have
seen, her whole diagnosis of modernity rests upon the belief that work and labour
are not sources of modern emancipation. Ironically, in this she seems to almost
succumb to a form of materialist determinism that she so emphatically
criticises in Marxist and Nazi ideologies. Yet, clearly the working class
movement was the bearer of strong social and economic claims as well as
political ones. To reduce the emancipatory contribution of this movement to its
political dimension is hard to reconcile with its history.
15. The
fundamental problem with Arendt's analysis in The Human Condition is her
ontologisation of certain activities with certain spaces and the conviction
that such activities can be defined by their substantive content. This view is
both historically questionable and also inconsistent with Arendt's pluralist
and dialogical model of politics. The idea that politics has its optimal
topographical location in the public square is contestable on the basis of
Arendt's own view of political power as common action. A whole range of diverse
locations can give themselves over to common action. The trade union activity
of workers is a case in point. As new groups enter the public realm, as did the
workers in the 19th century, the public and the scope of its agenda widens.
Whereas the public agenda of the classical polis was defined by the moral and
political criteria of a relatively homogenous male citizenry, this changes as
different groups struggle to enter the public space. The activities of labour
and work associated with economics and technology are the locus of differential
power relations. Such asymmetries generate struggles about freedom and justice.
The struggle over who gets what is not just a matter of life and consumption
but also of justice. This means that all types of activity can be the topics of
public conversation when the power relations governing them are challenged. In
this sense public spaces and their agendas are dynamic and cannot be predefined
by specification of appropriate place or substantive contents. What is
important is not so much what the public discourse is about but the way in
which it takes place so that it is equally transparent and accessible to all.
16. Arendt’s
ontologisation of spaces, activities and their substantive content results in a
failure to recognise the historical fluidity of politics. Nevertheless, the
lasting impact of her vision comes from her assertion that modern citizens
should not be content with a narrow understanding of freedom which confines it
to the civil rights that protect liberties and ensures limited government and
the periodic contribution to representative institutions. She is not about to
denigrate civil rights and even concedes that ‘the distance between tyranny and
constitutional limited government is as great as, perhaps greater than, the
distance between limited government and freedom’ (OR218). Here she concedes the
liberal principle that civil rights are necessary to protect and stabilize the
private sphere against the encroachments of public power. Nevertheless, she is
still adamant that the full measure of freedom means participation in
government or nothing at all. While civil rights are crucial they are
essentially negative and only safeguards of our private happiness (OR130). They
are a lesser contribution to the full physiognomy of freedom, deformed by their
liberal inheritance. Arendt makes it clear that the best they can achieve is a
certain control over rulers. However, they do not allow the citizen to become a
participant in public affairs (OR268). She endorses the view of the young Marx
that they cannot protect individuals from the ravages of the modern bourgeois
economy. In her model of a direct participatory republic, the emphasis is
definitely on public freedom. Yet, it is worth noting that the egalitarian
universalism on which this model depends derives its constitutive principle not
from the ancient polis but from modernity, from the legal framework of civil
society. Arendt's reluctance to acknowledge this emancipatory contribution of
society to modernity is reflected in her uncertainty over the real status of
civil rights. At times she understands civil rights amongst the liberal
negative liberties while, at other times, the rights to assembly, association
and speech are the most important truly political freedoms. While this
ambiguity is real and reflects the fact that rights often mediate between
private and public spheres, such mediation cannot be tolerated in Arendt's strict
conceptual division between political and social. Arendt criticizes modernity
for losing a sense of the public dimension and meaning of freedom. With equal
justice the contemporary critic might criticise her for denigrating the
privatisation of freedom. She fails to recognise the degree to which public
scrutiny of the private domain can win gains for freedom. She fails to see that
the modern social can be a site of mediation between public and private and of
political struggles which make a real contribution to the modern quest for
freedom. In this respect, feminist targeting of the "personal (the
private) as political" has realised, and continues to reap, significant
gains for freedom in the contemporary world.
17. Arendt's
concept of politics is one that celebrates plurality and difference. Politics
as participatory association is part and parcel of the idea of a public space
that accommodates multiple perspectives on a common set of concerns. The
experience of the momentous peoples revolutions in Eastern Europe in the late
eighties undoubtedly reinforces the vitality of Arendt's vision that full
political participation can be an elevating, joyous and even heroic business
which manifests some of the highest human qualities and experiences. Yet,
however positively we evaluate these aspects, the mere fact that these great
revolutionary moments continue to periodically erupt cannot obscure the fact
that they remain moments that have not managed to evolve complementary
institutions. Her praise for revolutionary workers councils cannot hide the
fact these "new beginnings" have quickly died lacking durability and
permanence. To conceive the history of revolutions as a tragic story of missed
opportunities does not really advance the cause of explaining this demise nor
allow us to determine on what basis this richer participatory freedom could be
integrated into modernity as renewed permanent participation and a revitalised
public space. A fundamental problem Arendt does recognise was the failure of
the council experiments to come to terms with the extent to which the
governmental machinery in modern societies must perform functions of
administration (OR273). Clearly, Arendt wants to distinguish between
administrative matters for which she believes there are objectively
ascertainable answers and no need for opinions and political issues where
debate and opinions are fruitful. Councils typically failed to make these
demarcations and thus their attempts to self manage factories ended in dismal
failure. However, precisely this recognition would appear to push Arendt back
towards the model of differentiation between state administrative machinery and
people that she has already rejected with her participatory ideal. This failure
is significant because she clearly put forward her proposal for federated
self-managing councils as a serious alternative to modern representation. She
viewed this as a way of extending political participation beyond small
political and bureaucratic elites. Nor are the shortcomings of Arendt's account
confined to what she failed to deal with or questions not answered.
18. Today it
is clear that most contemporary movements emerge inevitably from the terrain of
the social. While the revolutionary tradition does offer instances of
"pure politics" in the sense of spontaneous and heroic action, it is
very debatable whether even Arendt’s own revolutionary examples were devoid of
social and economic motives. Historians like Eric Hobsbawn treat Arendt as an
idealist whose "ideal type" revolution bears little relation to the
real thing. A typical example is Arendt's neglect of the acute class conflicts
of polis society that generated a continuous pressure to broaden citizenship
and allow political access to formerly excluded social elements. The very idea
that politics should exclusively be a pursuit of lofty ambition, glory and
honor, unsullied by private interests or the material concerns of the larger
society, seems to curiously quarantine freedom from any ends outside itself.
This division between the political and social generates a range of questions
that are not easy to answer.1. If politics is reduced to a public debate that
excludes social issues, the question arises as to what the substance of this
discourse is to be about. Arendt acknowledged that the topics of public debate
are always in flux but continued to assert that some aspects were purely
administrative and therefore social. Yet, Arendt solution seems highly
contestable. The question of adequate housing is never a matter of basic
biological requirements but of historically conditioned social and cultural
standards over which there has always been dispute and political contest. In
almost all the issues one can think of technical and political considerations
are so tightly woven together, her efforts to maintain a clear distinction
between them seem doomed. 2. Even if we accept her problematic distinction, we
are faced with another substantial difficulty. Even if we could easily
demarcate a sphere of issues to be treated as questions of mere administration,
we would still be faced with the political problem of effective administration.
In large complex mass societies, this is a crucial everyday issue of efficiency
and real power. With her emphasis of self-managing councils, Arendt has nothing
significant to say about the problem of the state. She was very hostile to
bureaucracy as the "rule of no one" yet a whole raft of very
practical questions remain regarding the control and management of
administrative agencies that are usually the concern of the centralised state.
3.The purity of Arendt vision of politics is striking in the absence of any
consideration of justice and power. Afterall, the economy is not just
production and consumption but also a structure of power. It is a system of
ongoing relationships reinforcing certain patterns of distribution that
reproduce inequalities and exploitation. These are vital political issues which
cannot simply confined to the domain of the social.
19. Typically,
modern critical theorists have departed from the diagnosis of modern
rationalisation presented by Weber: this posited both the "loss of
meaning" and the "loss of freedom". Today much contemporary
debate, say between Liberals and Communitarians revolves around a preference
for one or other side of this dichotomy. Either affirm freedom, accepting the
loss of meaning, or affirm meaning and constrain freedom in the form of rampant
individualism or multi-cultural tribalism. Arendt's notion of world alienation
implies that freedom has no real sense unless it is informed by an
inter-subjective context that affirms and generates meaning. On the whole,
modern liberal democracy has taken the freedom option and consigned meaning to
either the traditional community of the past or at best to the flimsy
constructs of individual lives. Whether this tack is ultimately viable remains
one of the great contemporary issues. While Arendt holds freedom to be her
highest value, her emphasis on worldliness and plurality makes it clear that
freedom is no disembodied spirit, that it requires an institutional space and a
life-world that is durable and facilitates meaning. Yet, while this is the task
she provides no comprehensive answer as to how it could be realised. While she
is obviously critical of bourgeois processuality, she does not provide any
alternative to capitalist market mechanisms. The nearest she comes to this are
some interesting comments in the forties regarding the Jewish Kibbutz and the
image of a new humanity and her later work on the revolutionary tradition. As
we have seen, she can only point to failed historical experiments. In this
respect, Arendt is a philosopher of lost causes. Her favorite aphorism comes
from Cato (The victorious cause pleases the Gods, but the defeated one pleases
Cato). However, this preference for lost causes and treasures is more than mere
philosophical indulgence. Arendt’s revolutionary treasures are moments of
exemplary validity because they remind us of the real importance of collective
action, plurality and the capacity for radical innovation in politics at a time
when there appears to be no definitive solutions or emancipatory systems. These
are values that are not confined to any single political agenda or exhausted by
mere utopian thinking. One of Arendt’s most important claims is that the philosophical
tradition from its beginnings insisted on trying to make politics scientific
and secure true knowledge. In so doing, it has largely overlooked the essence
of politics that lies irredeemably in the realm of opinion, spontaneity,
action, plurality and judgement. In the prose of our modern world this is a
perspective worth holding on to.
