Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hannah Arendt Freedom and Politics
Hannah Arendt Freedom and Politics
SERFDOM
AN ANTHOLOGY OF
\TESTERN THOUGHT
edind fui
ALBERT HUNOLD
//
D.
Sehttiorc
'Euopa,
'Dic
freii Vclt in
Firtt
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ftou
kahcn Krieg'
'
H'
AC
A
Steaens
*-fC aot
,|\lt
cARLo ,tNroNr,
Bozze
Freedom Indivisible
27
wILHELM ndnrn,
The Free West
lforld?
49
Ceneya
,9
(w'
83
,ffi
lrRrEDRrcH
OF CHICAGO
'f'HEoDo
A. rrAyE
r,
9t
Cbicago
it
mean?
r07
UNIVERSITT
IIBRARY
Holland
Copjright rg6r b1 D, Reidel PablisttingCompani, Dordrecht'
No poii
o7
*is
book
nal
be reproduced
x nt:rr,
Self-Appraisal
Reidel, Dordrecbt
Bonn
tt
::: I
tr9
I' I
17r
T|
Ar,rixAN
Dlitr
t(
iJS't'()w
pleasure rambles we so often take. And for this rcason l rurr r:on.,
vinced that this Vit.thzlitik, in its widest and most livcly scnsc,r is
both the counter-stroke with which we should and must confronr
bolshevism, and at the same time the factot that vrill prove to bc
decisive in the cold war.z Once we succeed in this, once we cmbarli
with the requisite energy and determination on this course and continue along it, the superiority of our own v/ay of life vis-i-vis the inhuman conditions on the other side will become so completely obvious that not only shall vre win the cold war, but we shall also prcvent the outbreak of a hot war, which would be a catastrophe for thc
whole human race. And so, it is my rm belief that this overcoming
of mass regimentation, this policy of decentralisation, is, indeecl, a
matter of the most vital concern to each and everv one of us.
FIAN
NAH
AR I] N D T
New York
It
1 Sr>ziale Marktwittschaft
und
\felt
im
Both editcd by Dr. Albert Hunold and pubiished by Eugen Rentsch Verlag,
Erlcnbach-Ziirich and Stuttgarr.
r90
I
lIr\NNAII
thc world is not the scene of political activity _ as, for exalrplc,
in
a despotically ruled
AltIrND't,
r9t
I-IANNA],I ARENDT
community
discovered. It is thanks to this manner of speech and to these associations that, no matter how far we may have moved from the original
r9t
IIANNAII
RLNDT'
II
In the relationship berween political government and freedom, it is
not a question of freedom of will or choice, of liberun arbitriunt,
which decides between good and evil, rather in the way Richard III
decided to become a miscreant. Rather is it the freedom of Brutus:
'That this shall be, or we will fallfor it,, the freedom, that is, to bring
into being something which has hitherto not existed, which cannot
be conjured up by the power of imagination, for the simple reason
that it was never known to have existed. The action hire is not
dictated by some pre-knowledge of events to come, which cannot
be grasped by the will. Rather, as Montesquieu puts it in his analysis
of forms of government, is it dictared by a principle. This principle
inspires it, but lays down no aim, as would be the case in,-say, ihe
implementation of a programme; it fulfils itserf not in any given
achievement, but purely in the completion of the action iis.ir. m
this, the will and the deed are fused together, are onc ancl the same
thing; the will does not pave the way for the deed it is itself an act.
The deed is not the implementation of an act of will, it does not so
much manifest itseif as a subjective act of volition and its final purpose, but is the means by which the principle, as such, finds its
expression - say honour or valour or the Greek d.ei d.Eote6ew, the
urge to outshine all, but also fear, mistrust or hate. Freedom, again,
is not a predication of these principles, nor is it confined to the will
or any other att'ibute of human nature; while one is acting, one is
free - but not before or after one acts, because to act and ta be frce
are one and the same thing.
ry6
lfo
CS
}IANNAII ARENDT
represent the mise en sc8ne for that freedom, the virtuosity of which
unfolds only in terms of action. The sphere of public politics then
becomes, for all the wodd to see, the place where freedom can
manifest itself and become a reality in words, deeds and accomplishments, which remain in the minds ofmenandconstitutehistory.
whatever happens in this sphere is, per defnitionen, political, even
though it has nothing directly to do with action. whai remains outside this sphere, such as for example the great achievements of the
barbatian empires, may well be very great and remarkable evenrs;
but they are not political in the true sense of the word. without
some such mise en scdne of its own, fashioned to suit its own requirements, freedom cannot become a reality, There is no such thing as
freedom without politics, because without poritics it would have
no substance. A community, on the other hand, which does not
provide
arena for the endless variations of virtuosity but in which
^n
freedom manifests itself, is not a political entity.
The conception of freedom and politics and the relationship and
connection between them may appear to be somewhat strange,
because by freedom we understand either freedom of thought or
freedom of will, and because to the field of politics we ascd-be the
task of providing the necessities of life, which ensure the security
of human existence and the safeguarding of our vital interests. But
in this, too, there is something which rings very famiriar and which
we have always known and tend to forget only when we start to
theodse on these matters. It is the age-old conviction that courage
is the cardinal virtue in political bahaviour. Now courage is a mighiy
word. I do not mean that foolhardy type of courage wtticrr welcomes
danger and gladly hazards all for the sake of thi thrill that danger
and possible death evoke. Such foolhardy courage is of as littlevalue
in life as is cowardice. The type of courage which we feel is indispensable in the political field does not emanate from individual
inclination, but from the nature of the community. For in contfast
to a man's private wodd, in which, in the safe haven of the family
and the privacy of his own four walls, everything combines, as combine it must, to safeguard the existence of the individuar, there stands
rg8
were and
199
T
IIANNITII
ARLNDT
#:l?J"j,"_":#1n:"::::d,H
T*.fir.H';
all political events ancl actions to a historicar
process which must
obey its own, inherent raws. The difference
between this widelyheld ideologicar iclea and a totahtarian
dictatorship is,"that the
latter has discovere-cl the means by which
it can absorb men into
the social stream of history ir, ,rr.h a
way that they ,ro Lrrg;, lrurr"
-ron
any desire to interfere with its automatic
flow, bui on the
rury
become willing to assist in increasing
its momentum. The means by
which this is achieved are the compursion
exercised by a reign of
tcrror'
from without, and ihe imposition of an ideologicar
rlzay.of 'nleashed
thinking fronr within. There is no doubt
that this totalitarian
development is thc vitar step towards
botrr the elimination oiforti.,
from the activities of men and the abolition
of freeclom, ir it
however' wherever the concept of society
"ory,
ancl history have ousted
the concept of politics, freedtm is on
the wane.
III
$7e have seen that the assertion: 'The
meaning of politics is freedom,
pre-supposes that poritics are concerned
trru.:
20t
HANNAH ARENDT
did not know what freedom was. Such an assumption is, of course,
absurd,_but in support of it, it could be pointed out that the subject
of freedom receives no mention in the works of any of the ancient
philosophers before St. Augustine. The explanation of this remarkable omission lies in the fact that in the classical era freedom was
regarded exclusively and radically as a political concept; it was the
personification of ndAtg and of political life the
BloE nohux,iq.
But our own philosophical tradition, in so far as it stems from
Parmenides and Plato, was originally based on the antithesis of
n6)'rq and its political concept. That the ancient philosophers should
have been quite non-plussed by the subject of freedorrr- that most
political of all the conceprs of the classicar world is, incidentally,
quite understandable. Indeed, it could not be otherwise - until
christianity discovered in freedom of volition a freedom which
had nothing to do with politics, which could be attained in communion with oneself and which therefore was not dependent upon
intercourse with the many.
In view of the exceptional potential power inherent in volition,
we are apt to forget that the wiil did not originally take the form
of l-want-to-and-r-can, but rather of a conflict betv/een desire and
ability; and it was this conflict that the ancients failed to discover.
The I-want-to-and-I-can concept was, of coufse, quite familiar to
them' It was Plato, my readers will remember, who enunciated the
maxim that only the man who could both command and obey himself
should have the right to command others, but be under no otfigation
to obey the behests of other men. This self-control, or alternalively,
the conviction that self-control alone justifies the exercise of authority, has remained the hall-mark of the aristocratic outlook to this
very day. And it is, in fact, a typically political virtue, a phenomenon
of virtuosity, in which volition and ability are so closily linked as
to become virtually one and the same thing. But when we thus
again separate volition and ability, we are speaking in contraclictory
terms from the viewpoint of the christian conception of freedom
of volition. Had the ancients had any idea of the existence of this
difference, they would undoubtedly have regarded freedom as
the predicate of ability rather than of volition. s7herever ability
founders, be it as the result of extraneous circumstance or of
202
IIANNAII ARENDT
it{I,:.tit)()tu
be disastrous
as
individuars or
as communities
politicar.,,tityi,.;;ffi ;1il'"::T:,'.',T"i:?iHruf
T:,#l
AN
^
zo4
t) t,o t,l't'lcii
20t
r
IIANNAII
ITENI)'r'
IiItIi[,DOM
phies which differ sharply from one another - the first bcins tlrrrr
which is generally accepted as such in his Criticiue of PracticalRc:rsorr
and the second that contained in his Critique of Judgemcnt. 'l'hlt
the first part of the latter is, in reality, a political philosophy is :r
lact that is seldom mentioned in works on Kant; on the other h:rrrtl,
it can, I think, be seen from all his political writings that f<rr [..:rrrr
himself the theme of 'judgement' carried more weigl-rt than thtl ol'
'practical reason'. In the 'Critique of Judgement' freedom is por."
trayed as a predicate of the power of imagination and not ol tlrt.
will, and the power of imagination is linked most closely wirlr
that viider manner of thinking which is political thinking par c\cellence, because it enables us to 'put ourselves in the rnintls ol'
other men'. It is only in this context thatit becomes clear, fronr tlrc
philosophical point of vierv, why Kant felt able ro say with such
emphasis: 'External force, which denies a man thc liberty to cxpress his own thoughts publicly, deprives him also of his frccclonr
of thought.' Flere, being unfree reacts on the inherent capacity t<r
be free and destroys it. Freedom of thought, of sclf-communion,
as I(ant puts it, if it is to give birth to ideas, is clcpcnclcnr uiron
others and on the opportunity to 'state our opinions pultlicly, irr
order to see whether they appeal to the minds of othcrs'.
But to this conception of a freedom that is cntircly inclcpcnclcrrr
of the frccdom of the will little or no impoltlulcc hus l>ccn altrrclrctl
in subsequent assessments of I(ant's philosophy. ln his r>wn philo.
sophical writings, too, it is overshadowcd by thc imporrancc lltrrt:lrctl
207
IIANNAII, AITIJND'I'
ITIIITEDOM AND I'OLI'r,ICS
to'ptactical reason', which ascribes to thc will all power - for good
or for evii - in human affairc, while action itself, as will be recollcitecl,
does not come within the scope of human power and ability, but
is
dictated by necessity and the laws of cause ancl effect. That a man
can be free only if the 'I-want-to' is not opposed by an inner .rcannot" and that he loses his freedom as soon as he begins to act
- concerning these trizo fundamental principles of his p,rr.iy political
philosophy in the narrower sense, I(ant harboured hardly u.ryioobtr.
to lead the life of the ndAtq with those of his own class. Initiatir.,
however, also implies leadership of others, without whose hclp thc
IV
Those of us for whom the whole question of frccclom stands in
the shadovr of christianity and a philosophy that is fundamentally
anti-political by tradition find it hard to understand how action
can possess a freedom that is independent of the will. In an efforti
to dehne more precisely this state of freedom which is achievec{ only
in the course of action, let us return once more to antiquity - not
from any desire to display our crudition, ancl cettainly not with
the object of maintaining continuity of our tradition, but simply
in order to re-capture those experiences of which, admittedly, we
all have sorne idea, but which in latter days have never again mani_
fested themselves in such classical purity.
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that both r,atin and Greek
have two words, strictly different in application, to denot e ,to act,
ot ,to do'. In Greek we have iipTen (to start something, to give
a lead, to control) and npd.r'ren (to ca*y something ti'io,rgh to
its logical conclusion). The cquivalenr words in Latinlre ogri, und
gererei the act,ion of the iatter culminates in the res gestae, the cleeds
accoruplis and which purs i.rto history.
and events which we
.call faits
In both cases, the initial phase of action is that it mikes a beginning,
sets sornething new in motion. The fact that freedom is oiiginafy
experienced in this initiation of something new, the action i,hi.h,
since l{ant, we have come to define as spontaneity, is directly implicit
in the very wide meaning conveyed by the Greek word, ir, *rri.t
the sense of initiating is linked with leading and finally controlling
- in other words, with the characteristic qualities of a free man.
Implicit, too, in the wide meaning of d.qyeu is the sense that only
zo8
2a9
IIANNAII
AI{ljND'T
was
in the world something that was a beginning that Gocl crcatcrl rn:rn:
'Initiau at e$/ homo creattu est, aitte quen neruo fuit.'
In view of the anti-political tendencies of early Christcnclorrr, it
may seem paradoxical that it should be a Christian thinkcr wlr<r
should have developed the philosophical implications of thc ancicnt
concept of freedom, which originally was purely political. 'Ihis
conception of freedom, too, left no mark on Christian or moclcrtt
philosophy, and it is not until we turn to Kant's writings thal wc
again come across traces of it. I(ant, like St. Augustine, recognisccl
two completely independent concepts of freedom - pute freedom,
which he defined as: 'spontaneous freedom from constraint through
the impulses of the sentient faculties' - a negative freedom, and thut
spontaneity which, in his philosophy, is so essential in thouqht
and appraisal and which he defines as the ability 'to initiate a scrics
of events entirely independently'. How closely Kant's spontallciLy
is relatcd to St. Augustine's beginning is shown by the fact that hc
himself also describcs it as 'a freedom in the cosmological sensc'.
If, fot him, it were first, foremost and exclusively a manifestation
of the will, it would be difficult to understand why appraisal shoulcl
not be possible without spontaneity of the concepts of the mind,
and why he speaks with such emphasis regatding 'the spontaneity
of thought'.
Be that as it may, the fact that the fitst philosophical coflcept of frecdom experienccd in the field of politics should have been foundccl
by a Roman Christian thinker will seem strange only if Christianity
still conveys to our minds that anti-political attitude of early Christendom, and in particular the doctrine of the will, as enunciated in
the epistles of St. Paul. But our ideas would, I am sute, be modified,
if we were to concentrate on Jesus of Nazareth himself, his personality and his teaching. His sermons show an extraordinarily profouncl
understanding of freedom and of the power that is inherent in human
freedom; but the human faculty which gives rise to this power and,
in the words of the gospel, can move mountains, is not the will,
but faith. I"aith is a miracle our comprehension of which is in many
ways ambiguous and hard to define. Let us, however, disregard thc
ambiguities and concentrate on those aspects in which a miracle
HANNAH ARENDT
IT
V
these philosophic arguments regarding a concept of freeclom
based on political experience, there is some conclusion to be cltawtt
If, from
2rt
IIANNAII
ARI]NDT
also
governed.
that in the latter it is only the beginning that is free; the complclcrl
if it is successful, is nothing more than the realisatiort ol'
thought
with which the process began or the atticle v,'hich thc
the
power of imagination had originally conceived. Action, on thc olh('t'
hand, however small its achievements may be, strives, whcn it lr:ts
reached its goal, to ensure that freedom receives ever fresh it.t.t1'lctus
and that new beginnings are constantly injected into the strcatrt ol'
things alrcady initiated. For the result of action is not somc tlrirlli,
which, once it has been conceived on the drawing-board, cutt lrc
manufactured. It has, t^ther, the characteristics of a story, wlriclr
continues to unfold as long as the action continues, but the cucl rtl'
which no one, not even he who started it, can either conceivc or
foresee. In the case of action, therefore, the differences betwccl'l
beginning and completion are not so great that he who initialcs
the action knows in advance exactly what the completion will bc,,
while those who assist him are called upon merely to implemcnt
his pre-knowledge, carry out his orders and put his decisions itrto
practice. In action, beginning and completion merge into ottc
another, and this, applied to the sphere of political activity, mcans
that he who takes the initiative and by so doing assumes thc rolc:
of leader must act towards those who come forward to help hirrr
always as a marr among equals, and never as a ruler among his servants or a teacher among his pupils and disciples. That is what Flerodotus meant, when he said that in fteedom mafl neither rules nor
^
is ruled and can therefore be free only in an isocracy, as one in thc
midst of his equals.
From the state of being free, in which the gift of freedom, of thc
ability-to-initiate, becomes a concrete reality in the world, therc
emerges, side by side with the narrative which action creates, thc
field of political activity itself. It exists wherever men live in unison,
unfettered by despotism or serfdom; but it disappears at oncc even though the institutional framework which encloses it remains
intact - the moment action ceases and preservation of the status quo
and administration start to function, or even when initiative faltcrs
274
2rt
happiness.
processes to which
men afe subjected in some measure and the absolute slaves of which
they would become without the miracle of freedom, that they are
always disastrous as far as man is concerned - as disastrous as the
biological process which conrrols his whole existence and which,
biologically, can only and invariably lead him from birtl-r to death.
From the miracle that can occur in political affairs - so long as
man's freedom, his ability to interrupt the disastrous march of evenrs,
remains intact
process,
HANNAH ARENDT
and fails to inject new beginnings into the processes which have been
initiated by action. Then the processes which have been set in motion
by freedom become transformed into autornatic processes, and this
man-made automatism is no less fatal to the woild at rarge than
is the automatism of riature to the life of the individual man. rn the
study of histoty we refer in such cases to petrifying or decrining
civilisations, and we know that the process of deterioration can
continue over a period of many centuries, that, in a purely quantitative
sense, it can, indeed, occupy the major portion of history as it has
been handed down to us.
Because in human history the epochs of freedom have been of
comparatively short duration, and because, on the other hand, dur-
human tace.
2t7