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PENTA Leo J. - Hannah Arendt On Power
PENTA Leo J. - Hannah Arendt On Power
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LEO J. PENTA
The work of Hannah Arendt, especially her most seminal work, The Human
Condition (1958b), is usually interpreted and critiqued in terms of her con
cept of action. While the centrality of this notion is unquestionable, its rela
tionship to her radical redefinition of power is generally given rather short
shrift. Power, when it becomes a topic of critical discussion at all, is seen
secondarily, and its redefinition is treated merely as one of the consequences
of her notion of action.1 Yet Arendt's radical notion of power, as I will at
tempt to show, is central to her normative reconceptualization of the politi
cal by means of the notion of action.
Therefore, what I would like to do in this essay, albeit in a somewhat
elliptical form, is to read Arendt on her own terms from the point of view of
an interest in the question of power.2 This reading centers, in the first part of
this paper, around what I will argue to be the two concepts which can best
get to the heart of Arendt's distinctive notion of power: (1) language under
stood from a hermeneutic perspective and (2) a decidedly relational consti
tution of the political self. These are clearly overlapping notions, yet they
are distinguishable according to the aspect from which power can be viewed:
either in relation to action seen formally as a particular kind of human activ
ity or in relation to action seen in terms of agency, that is, with respect to
those who act. In the second part of this paper, I will further clarify Arendt's
notion of power?as based in communication and relation?by contrasting
it with the classic modern view of power as unilateral domination.
As a preliminary step, however, an initial justification of the centrality of
power from within Arendt's work is in order. This justification can be found
textually in the way in which Arendt herself links the notion of power to the
undisputedly central notion of action. Contextually, the pivotal nature of
chapter 28, "Power and the Space of Appearance," to the discussion of ac
tion in part 5 of The Human Condition points to a more than secondary
210
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HANNAH ARENDT 211
relationship. Here she distinguishes power from both violence or force (seen
instrumentally and physically in terms of the possession of implements) and
strength (seen as individual physical ability), and she links it inextricably
with the boundless potential for action present when people gather together
under uncorrupted conditions of communication "where word and deed have
not parted company" (1958b, 199-207).3 In On Revolution, Arendt explic
itly characterizes this relationship using the metaphor of the relationship
between "the elementary grammar of political action and its more compli
cated syntax, whose rules determine the rise and fall of human power" (1977,
173). Moreover, if we compare a predicate applied uniquely to action in The
Human Condition and uniquely to power in On Revolution, we find an al
most total congruence. In the former, action is characterized as "the only
activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things
or matter" (1958b, 7). Power in the latter work "is the only human attribute
which applies solely to the worldly in-between space by which men are
mutually related" (1977, 175). On the basis of this and other textual evi
dence, I would like to characterize the relationship between action and power
in Arendt as correlative rather than subsidiary. From this correlation it is
possible to expose the implicit grounds of Arendt's explicit characterization
of power, and to support its radicality.
We can apply this correlation by recalling two of Arendt's most important
characterizations of action. First, action is essentially linked to speech.
"Speechless action," she writes, "would no longer be action because there
would no longer be an actor, and the actor, the doer of deeds, is possible only
if he is at the same time the speaker of words" (1958b, 178-79). Second,
action is inextricably connected with the disclosure of the who, the agent or
initiator, a human being who is not only simply other but distinct. "This
disclosure of 'who' in contradistinction to 'what' somebody is?his quali
ties, gifts, talents, and shortcomings, which he may display or hide?is im
plicit in everything somebody says and does" (179). I would like to show
how both of these essential and explicit attributes of action are implicitly
enfolded within Arendt's discussion of power.
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212 LEO J. PENTA
include the "space of appearance," the "public realm," and the "web of rela
tionships," all of which have a decidedly spatial and/or visual connotation.
In fact, under close scrutiny Arendt's discussion of power can be seen to be
informed almost entirely by categories of language, more specifically, of
language understood according to a hermeneutic paradigm. In other words,
the qualities essential to Arendt's unique description of power can be re
duced almost entirely to the qualities of speech understood as conversation
within the transcendental horizon of language. The reciprocal activity of
speaking and hearing has primacy over both the spoken and the speakers,
and such activity depends ultimately on the fact that language can never be
entirely objectified by its users. Therefore, our concern is with speech as
medium of human interrelation, which, though it always appears within spe
cific semantic and pragmatic configurations, is not reducible simply to any
of these.4 The argument for this correspondence between power and speech
will take the form of a weaving together of the many strands that make up
Arendt's unique understanding of power. By taking up each strand in turn,
we can clarify an additional aspect of the correspondence between power
and speech. No one point of comparison carries the full weight of the argu
ment. Rather, the concurrence of a series of aspects, a number of interwoven
strands, form the argumentative rope from which the conclusion hangs.
As an initial indicator of the speech-power link, let us consider the central
characterization of power as it first appears in The Human Condition: its
connection with the "space of appearance" (1958b, 28, 199-207). Arendt
sees this space from the perspective of the twofold quality of human plural
ity?distinction and equality. It is thus circumscribed by the poles of unique
distinctness and communality: the dialectic of the "who" and the "we" of all
true political action. This space is an expression of the idea of the "in-be
tween," which, according to the general sense given it by Arendt, "relates
and separates men at the same time" (52). Power, unlike strength, force, or
violence (from which Arendt specifically and unequivocally differentiates
power), is neither a property nor an instrument, nor any sort of monadic
phenomenon, but rather has its existence inter homines, when people act
together in public. It is that which constitutes the public space between those
in action. "Power is what keeps the public realm, the potential space of ap
pearance between acting and speaking men, in existence" (200). Power can
perhaps be characterized as the medium of the originary political being to
gether of human beings in action, "the lifeblood of human artifice," whose
raison d'etre is the web of human affairs and relationships (204). It can be
further characterized as the essential human "in-between," first as to its ex
periential localization and then, more broadly, as to its proper ontological
designation.
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HANNAH ARENDT 213
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214 LEO J. PENTA
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HANNAH ARENDT 215
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216 LEO J. PENTA
word.9 Therefore, such products become less clear and less easily under
standable the further they are removed from their origin. Such products can
also never replace the living contact with conversation, and the waiving of
such contact, in order to remain at a particular recorded stand of the conver
sation, opens the way for the loss of the "thread" of the discussion, and to the
eventual breakdown of the living conversation.
The final point in our comparison is the historical force Arendt attributes
to power?what we could term the remembered in-between. This character
istic of power consists in the possibility of efficacious, action-provoking
memories, stories of that which has taken place in the space of appearances
without the mediation of things, and that means without resort to homofaber.
Such a historical effectiveness of power pertains, therefore, not to the forms
of organization of power, but rather to the possibility of a direct passing on
of original power over time. Since power as a historical force can hardly be
separated from tradition as linguistic event, the connection here between
power and language is immediately evident. This power of memory implies
not a final fixation of the living conversation, but rather the passing of what
is remembered into the unavoidable conversation with the past in which we
stand, and in which that which is remembered can itself remain alive and
effective. This is not a history of ideas, much less an idea of history, but
political history as a collection of stories which, although they reach us now
only as fragments, have passed inextricably into our language. At work here
is the power of language through time, a recognition of which Arendt gives
us in her essay on Walter Benjamin: "Any period to which its own past has
become as questionable as it has to us must eventually come up against the
phenomenon of language, for in it the past is contained ineradicably, thwart
ing all attempts to get rid of it once and for all" (1968c, 204).10
The fragments of language, which are comparable to "pearls" and "coral,"
are deformed, sedimented, and fragmented. They remain powerful, how
ever, as long as they are still able to inform collective, public action.
Our comparison has sought to show that an extraordinary convergence
obtains between the constitutive elements of Arendt's notion of power, and a
hermeneutic conception of language. Without exception, this point-by-point
inspection of the Arendtian properties of power points to a linguistic para
digm which is their common point of departure. But beyond this, the com
parison uncovers the qualities of language that ultimately ground the claims
made for power.11 This stronger claim of our comparison, from which we
will proceed, maintains that there is an essential agreement between power
and language and proposes that power in Arendt's meaning of the term is
equivalent to the power of language. This stronger claim can be grounded
upon the nature of the elements used in the previous comparison. The points
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HANNAH ARENDT 217
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218 LEO J. PENTA
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HANNAH ARENDT 219
the source of humanitas, which can be achieved "only by one who has thrown
his life and his person into the 'venture into the public realm'?in the course
of which he risks revealing something which is not 'subjective' and which
for that very reason he can neither recognize nor control" (1968b, 73-74). In
contradistinction to the medieval notion of person as incommunicable intel
lectual substance, this notion is based on the presupposition that "man can
communicate himself (1958b, 176). The mediation of personal uniqueness
is the actual communication of this uniqueness as its realization in action.
That which "carries" the political is neither under, over, nor in it, but rather,
solely in-between those who are related and constituted through it.
With this assertion, however, we have closed the circle and come once
again to power in Arendt's sense, and to the linguistic paradigm through
which, as we have argued above, it functions. The discursive dimension of
action and the relational constitution of political persons dovetail in the al
ternative notion of power presented by Arendt.
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220 LEO J. PENTA
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HANNAH ARENDT 221
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222 LEO J. PENTA
tion. Its dynamic is not accumulative, but rather?following from its non
disposability?spontaneous, and ever in need of renewal. Its end cannot con
sist of an absolute totality, since the notion of an absolutely unitary speech is
self-contradictory. Therefore, we can proceed from the formula that the dy
namic thrust of power2 is a plurality that moves toward solidarity. This em
phasizes the point that no reduction of the human plurality by means of
the relationality of power2 is intended, but rather the relation from which it
springs is originally plural and nonallergic. The origin in a plurality that is
ordered toward the action of a we in solidarity receives its impetus, not from
alienation with respect to the other, but from its communicative relation taken
in the strong sense, that is, in view of action and the actors. Since the origin
of power2 does not rest on the original situation of war, there is at least in
principle the possibility of establishing peace within the horizon of power.
Power2 remains dependent upon expansion, but in a reverse direction: it aims
at an expanding solidarity of actors who retain a plural uniqueness within
the conditional and always penultimate unity of a we. The limiting situation
of power2 is thus not annihilation, but the possible reversal of the original
presupposition of classic power: 'all against one'. This limiting situation
destroys the communicative nature of power2 and implies a relapse into domi
native power whenever the communicative relation of those who share in
power becomes so deformed that the we collapses into the totality of the I, or
of some other overriding principle of unity.
C. THE SYMMETRY OF POWER RELATIONSHIPS
I have previously distinguished the two notions of power at issue with re
spect to the internality or externality of the relations that they imply. I want
now to consider the power relationship with regard to the possibility of equal
ity within each type of relationship. This question must be seen in connec
tion with the previous one concerning the dynamics of power expansion. As
such, the typical power theory exhibits a progression from an original sym
metry and homogeneity toward a growing asymmetry as autonomic sover
eignty. This symmetry, when one looks at it in its most comprehensive form,
resides in an original equality, namely, the ability to kill the other. This ac
cords to each bearer of power an originally equal share of power in view of
its most radical form. The unity-seeking dynamic of power, however, re
duces this symmetry because successful domination demands the limitation
of this original equality with regard to the possibility of violent death. The
progressive advantage of an individual over its other, no matter how con
ceived, shows itself as sovereignty, which can only appear on the basis of an
asymmetric relationship. In the course of unification as the consolidation of
sovereignty, the continuing displacement must lead toward the eventual pow
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HANNAH ARENDT 223
erlessness of all others with respect to the power monopoly of the sovereign.
This is not only the model of Hobbes's Leviathan, but also the implicit struc
ture of all modern theories that are adduced from a conception of worldly
freedom in absolute autonomy (usually of the will) in which power is thought
of only in connection with actual or ideal sovereignty. Symmetry is then
perceivable either as the point of departure or in isolation, while interaction
always demands the mediation of freedom?which is absolute from the out
set?by some form of sovereignty.
When we consider power2 and symmetry, the pattern is reversed. We can
trace a progression from an original asymmetry that is transformed into a
symmetry as isonomy through power2. The asymmetry of the origin rests on
the inequality of people as they exist prior to their meeting in the space of
appearance, in private, pre-political relationship. This is the inequality of a
human being as homo or as ego before it has been revealed and constituted
as an acting person vis-a-vis other persons. In the action relationship of the
we which is mediated by power2, the human being appears as fundamentally
equal to the others insofar as it can constitute itself as a who in relationship
to the we of action. The image power2 imprints upon the we of action is
isonomic rather than autonomic: a person is neither dominating nor domi
nated. In this relationship a freedom that is limited from its essence, thus a
finite freedom, is realized. This notion of freedom is neither in its origin nor
in its realization autonomous and sovereign, but is conceived from the out
set as compossibility with a plurality of others as a we of action. Power2 is
coextensive with this finite freedom.
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224 LEO J. PENTA
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HANNAH ARENDT 225
NOTES
1. A recent example is D'Entreves (1989). The notable exception to this pattern is
Habermas, the title of whose important and insightful essay "Hannah Arendt's Communica
tions Concept of Power" (1976) announces a decidedly different interpretational stance. Al
though the essay itself appears, in many respects, more to read Habermas into Arendt than to
read Arendt on the basis of her own assumptions, Habermas does provide us with at least two
key insights into Arendt's work: both a recognition of the centrality of the issue of power and
a recognition of the link between power and speech. I agree in principle with Canovan, Luban,
and others who would accuse Habermas of a "creative mis-reading" of Arendt, rather than a
close reading of Arendt's own thought (see Canovan 1983 and Luban 1979). Some of
Habermas's most recent references (in interviews) to Arendt and the notion of "communica
tively generated power" (kommunikativ erzeugte Macht) integrate this notion of power into
his distinction between system and lifeworld. He sees this spontaneously generated commu
nicative power as the only alternative to the administrative systems of power and money that
threaten to overwhelm the lifeworld and the democratic "Meinungs-und Willens
bildungsprozesse" that go on within it (cf. Habermas 1990, 136, 94-95).
2. For a more detailed and in-depth treatment of the arguments developed in this essay,
see my "Macht und Kommunikation" (1985).
3. Although Arendt here uses force as a synonym for violence, in On Violence (1970,44
45) Arendt specifically separates the term force from violence and reserves it for the imper
sonal energy of nature or circumstances. She purposely does not use it to designate the hu
man forms of coercion short of violence that can corrupt the mutual relationship between
words and deeds upon which the space of appearances is based. Initially, I am assuming with
Arendt an uncorrupted political situation in order to clarify her concept of power. At the end
of the paper, I will return to pose briefly the problem caused by various corruptions of this
situation, some of which, as feminist theorists have pointed out, pertain to the very form in
which the political is conceived within the tradition of patriarchy (see, esp., Pateman 1989).
4. The emphasis here is on the fact that, as human beings, we speak, though always in
languages, and that this, as Aristotle notes, is essentially related to the politicalness of human
beings (see Politics 1253a). I do not want to suggest a single, transcendental, human lan
guage, though language may be a sort of transcendental characteristic of humanity. In a gen
eral sense, I am following Gadamer (1960). Arendt clearly would reject a view of language
such as the one expounded by Levinas in which language is explicitly limited to expression,
cleansed of action (see Totality and Infinity [1979, esp. 202-3]).
5. Compare page 178 of The Human Condition (1958), "Speech... is the actualization of
the human condition of plurality ..." and page 201, "Human power corresponds to the con
dition of plurality to begin with."
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226 LEO J. PENTA
6. For a more completely developed version of this argumentation, see my "Macht und
Kommunikation" (1985, 96-106).
7. In The Human Condition Arendt does not distinguish, as she does later in The Life of
the Mind (1981b, vol. 1, 36-46), between Korper in the Newtonian sense of a mere physical
object and Leib in the sense of an enfleshed living organism that presents itself to its environ
ment. Thus in The Human Condition, animal laborans, insofar as it as an expression of mere
corporeality, has no place in the space of appearances. The point is to avoid any reduction of
power to something that is merely a Korper, an object like the products of work. It is also
significant that in The Life of the Mind (198 lb, vol. 1, chap. 13) Arendt connects embodiment
with the soul (Seele), as opposed to the mind (Geist). The speech of the body is original and
nonmetaphorical, while thinking can only express itself metaphorically (see Major 1979).
8. Such a notion of the unending conversation is certainly not foreign to Arendt's phi
losophy: It is her model for the never-concluded striving for meaning that ensouls human
finitude and that she sees exemplarily expressed in Lessing's view of truth (see her "On
Humanity in Dark Times" [1968, esp. 26-31]). Also relevant here is the centrality of Arendt's
faithfulness to Kant's distinction between Verstand and Vernunft, which she interprets as the
distinction between achievable truth as facticity/scientific certainty, and meaning which con
tinually needs to be won anew.
9. See, for example, Plato's protestations against the written word, which he presents in
Phaedrus (274c-277c) and in the Seventh Letter (341b-344d). Arendt makes explicit refer
ence to Plato's position in connection with her discussion of the relationship between think
ing and speaking in The Life of the Mind (1981b, vol. 1, 115-19).
10. See also Thinking (1981b, vol. 1, 212) and The Human Condition (1958b, 205), as
well as Young-Bruehl's "Hannah Arendt's Storytelling" (1977).
11. I have not explored here the implications of this interpretation for Hannah Arendt's
claim to think politics without metaphysics. However, it is clear that the outlines of a social
ontology begin to appear when one probes some of Arendt's key presuppositions. In addition,
it seems that the difference between Arendt and Habermas's appropriation of her theory of
power into his theory of communicative competence becomes clearer. Habermas's under
standing of the role of linguistic performance is strongly procedural, whereas Arendt's is not.
Both have what may be termed communicative dimensions to their theories of action, but
their underlying conceptualization of communication differs.
12. Because they are not directly addressed by Arendt, I have excluded from explicit consid
eration here questions about the nature of solidarity with respect to plurality, about the nature
of the "we" of power with respect to difference; questions that are central to much contempo
rary discussion. Particularly by thematizing issues of gender, race, and class, within the hori
zon of the renewal of public action, the question of respect for difference within and between
collectivities becomes important (see Young 1990, esp. chaps. 6 and 8, and Fraser 1989).
13. This critique spans almost all of Arendt's work and encompasses the entire modern
tradition. Three important stations in this critique are her critiques of Heidegger (1946b),
Nietzsche (1981b, vol. 2, chaps. 13 and 14), and Descartes (1958b, part 6).
14. "Imperialism" is the title of the second part of Origins of Totalitarianism (1951); it
attempts, in part, to show how the progressive loss of the ability to act in concert reflects the
development of bourgeois individualism's push toward isolation. See also Arendt's earlier
article: "Expansion and the Philosophy of Power" (1946a).
15. Throughout her work Arendt staunchly maintains a strong distinction between the
political and the social (see, esp., 1958b, ? 6, and 1977, chap. 2, 59-114). This separation
seems to have very early roots in her critique of sociology (cf. her review of Mannheim
[1930]). Her experiences in America confirmed and deepened this view. In 1946, she wrote
to Karl Jaspers: "The basic contradiction of this country is political freedom in the midst of
societal servitude" (see Kohler and Saner 1985, 67).
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HANNAH ARENDT 227
WORKS CITED
Arendt, Hannah. 1930. "K. Mannheims Ideologic und Utopie: Philosophic und Soziologie."
Die Gesellschaft 7; rpt. in Ideologie und Wissenssoziologie, ed. Hans-Joachim Lieber.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968. 163-76.
-. 1946a. "Expansion and the Philosophy of Power." Sewanee Review 54: 601-16.
-. 1946b. "What is Existenz Philosophy?" Partisan Review 13: 35-56.
-. 1951. Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
-. 1958a. Elemente und Urspriinge totaler Herrschaft. Frankfurt/M: Europaische
Verlagsanstalt.
-. 1958b. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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228 LEO J. PENTA
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HANNAH ARENDT 229
-. 1992. "Organizing and Public Philosophy." Journal for Peace and Justice Studies 4:
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Plato. 1963. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Riedel, Manfred. 1975. Metaphysik und Metapolitik. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. Vol. 1. Ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Ber
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Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton Uni
versity Press.
Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. 1977. "Hannah Arendt's Storytelling." Social Research 44: 183-90.
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