t h r e e

Fr e e d o m a n d Po l it ic s

Hannah Arendt

T o discuss the relation o f freedom to politics in the b rief time

o f a lecture can be justified only because a book w ould be
nearly as inadequate. W hether we know it or not, the question
o f politics is alw ays present w hen we speak o f the problem o f
freedom; and we can hardly touch a single political issue
without, im plicitly or explicitly, touching upon an issue o f
m an’s liberty. For freedom, w hich is only seldom — in times o f
crisis or revolution— the direct aim o f political action, is
actually the reason w hy men live together in political
organization at all; w ithout it, political life as such w ould be
m eaningless. T h e raison d ’etre o f politics is freedom, and its
field o f experience is action.
W e shall see later that freedom and free will (a hum an
faculty the philosophers have defined and redefined for
centuries) are by no means the same. Even less is it identical
w ith inner freedom, this inw ard space into w hich men m ay
escape from external coercion and fe e l free. W hatever the
legitim acy o f this feeling m ay be and how ever eloquently it
m ight have been described in late antiquity, it is h istorically a
late phenom enon, and it was originally the result o f an
estrangem ent from the w orld in w hich certain w orldly
experiences were transform ed into experiences w ithin one’s
own self. T h e experiences o f inner freedom are derivative in
that they alw ays presuppose a retreat from the w orld, w here

This lecture was first published in the Chicago Review, 14 ( 1 ) (Spring i 960),
18- 46 . Expanded versions later appeared as ‘Freedom and Politics’, in
A. Hunold (ed.), Freedom and Serfdom (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1961 ), and as
‘W hat is Freedom?’, in H. Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York:
Viking Press, 2nd edn., 1968).

58
 Freedom and Politics 59
freedom was denied, into an inwardness to w hich no other has
access. T h is inw ard space where the self is sheltered against
the world must not be m istaken for the heart or the m ind, both
o f w hich exist and function only in interrelationship w ith the
w orld. N ot the heart and not the m ind, but inw ardness as a
place o f absolute freedom w ithin one’s own self w as discovered
in late antiquity by those w ho had no place o f their own in the
world and hence lacked a w orldly condition w hich, from early
antiquity to alm ost the m iddle o f the nineteenth century, w as
unanim ously held to be a prerequisite for freedom .1
H ence, in spite o f the great influence w hich the concept o f
an inner, non-political freedom has exerted upon the tradition

1 The derivative character of the concept of inner freedom, as of the

experiences underlying the theory that ‘the appropriate region of hum an
liberty’ is the ‘inward domain of consciousness’ (John Stuart Mill), appears
more clearly if we go back to the origins. Not the modern individual with its
desire to unfold, to develop, and to expand, with its justified fear lest society
get the better of its individuality, with its em phatic insistence ‘on the
importance of genius’ and originality, but the philosophers of late antiquity
are representative in this respect. Thus, the most persuasive argum ents for
the absolute superiority of inner freedom can still be found in an essay of
Epictetus, the slave-philosopher, ‘O n Freedom’ (Dissertationes, Book iv. i).
Epictetus begins by stating that free is who lives as he wishes (s. i), a
definition which oddly echoes a sentence from Aristotle’s Politics in which
the statem ent ‘Freedom means the doing what a man likes’ is put in the
mouth of those who do not know what freedom is ( i 3 ioa 25 f.). Epictetus
then goes on to show that a man is free, if he limits himself to what is in his
power, if he does not reach into a realm where he can be hindered (s. 75 ).
The ‘science of living’ (s. 118 ) consists in knowing how to distinguish
between the alien world over which man has no power and the self of which
he may dispose as he sees fit (ss. 81 and 83). In this interpretation, freedom
and politics have parted for good. If the only possible obstacle to freedom is
m an’s own self or rather his inability to restrain his self s desires, then he
needs no politics and no political organization in order to be free. He can be
a slave in the world and still be free. The political background of this theory
is clearly indicated by the role which the ideas of power, dom ination, and
property play in it. According to ancient understanding, man could liberate
himself from necessity only through power over other men, and he could be
free only if he owned a place, a home in the world. Epictetus transposed
these worldly relationships into relationships within m an’s own self,
whereby he discovered that no power is so absolute as that which man yields
over himself, and that the inward space where man struggles and subdues
himself is more entirely his own, namely more securely shielded from
outside interference, than any worldly home could ever be.
60 Hannah Arendt
o f thought, it seems safe to say that m an w ould know nothing
o f inner freedom if he had not first experienced a condition o f
being free am ong others as a w orldly tangible reality. W e first
becom e aw are o f freedom or its opposite in our intercourse
w ith others, not in intercourse w ith ourselves. Before it
becam e an attribute o f thought or a q uality o f the w ill,
freedom was understood to be the free m an ’s status w hich
enabled him to move, to get aw ay from home, to go out into
the world and meet other people in deed and w ord. T h is
freedom clearly was preceded by liberation: in order to be free,
m an must have liberated h im self from the necessities o f life.
B ut the status o f freedom did not follow autom atically upon
the act o f liberation. Freedom needed in addition to mere
liberation the com pany o f other men w ho w ere in the sam e
state, and it needed a com m on p ublic space to meet them — a
politically organized w orld, in other w ords, into w hich each o f
the free-men could insert him self by w ord and deed.
O b viously, not every form o f hum an intercourse and not
every kind o f com m unity is characterized by freedom. W here
men live together but do not form a body politic— as, for
exam ple, in tribal societies or in the p rivacy o f the household—
the factor ruling their actions and behaviour is not freedom
but the necessities o f life and concern for its preservation.
M oreover, w herever the m an-m ade w orld does not becom e
the scene for action and speech— as in despotically ruled
com m unities w hich banish their subjects into the narrowness
o f the home and thus prevent the rise o f a p ub lic realm —
freedom has no w orldly reality. W ith ou t a politically gu aran -
teed public realm , freedom lacks the w orldly space to m ake its
appearance. T o be sure it m ay still dw ell in m en’s hearts as
desire or w ill or hope or yearning; but the hum an heart, as we
all know, is a very dark place and w hatever goes on in its
obscurity can hardly be called a dem onstrable fact. Freedom
as a dem onstrable fact and politics coincide and are related to
each other like two sides o f the sam e m atter.
Y et, it is precisely this coincidence o f politics and freedom
w hich we cannot take for granted in the light o f our present
political experiences. T h e rise o f totalitarianism , its claim to
having subordinated all spheres o f life to the dem ands o f
politics and its consistent non-recognition o f civil rights, above
 Freedom and Politics 61
all the rights o f privacy, makes us doubt not only the
coincidence o f politics and freedom but their very com patibility.
W e are inclined to believe that freedom begins w here politics
ends, because we have seen that freedom has disappeared
w hen so-called political considerations overruled everything
else. W as not the liberal credo, ‘the less politics the m ore
freedom ’, right after all? Is it not true that the sm aller the
space occupied by the political, the larger the dom ain left to
freedom? Indeed, do we not rightly m easure the extent o f
freedom in any given com m unity by the free scope it grants to
apparently non-political activities, free econom ic enterprise or
freedom o f teaching, o f religion, o f cultural and intellectual
activities? Is it not true, as we all som ehow believe, that
politics is com patible w ith freedom only because and in so far
as it guarantees a possible freedom from politics?
T h is definition o f political liberty as a potential freedom
from politics is not urged upon us m erely by our m ost recent
experiences; it has played a large role in the history o f political
theory. W e need go no farther than the political thinkers o f the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries w ho m ore often than not
sim ply identified political freedom w ith security. T h e highest
purpose o f politics, ‘the end o f governm ent’, was the guarantee
o f security; security, in turn, m ade freedom possible, and the
word freedom designated a quintessence o f activities w hich
occurred outside the political realm . Even M ontesquieu,
though he had not only a different, but a m uch higher opinion
o f the essence o f politics than H obbes or Spinoza, could still
occasionally equate political freedom w ith security.2 T h e rise
o f the political and social sciences in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries has even w idened the breach betw een
freedom and politics; for governm ent w hich, since the
beginning o f the modern age, had been identified w ith the total
dom ain o f the political, was now considered to be the ap -
pointed protector not so m uch o f freedom as o f the life
process, the interests o f society and its individuals. Security
rem ained the decisive criterion, but not the in d ivid u al’s
security against ‘violent death ’ as in H obbes (where the

2 See Esprit des lois, xn. 2 : ‘La liberte philosophique consiste dans
l’exercice de la volonte . . . La liberte politique consiste dans la surete.’
62 Hannah Arendt
condition o f all liberty is freedom from fear), but a security
w hich should perm it an undisturbed developm ent o f the life
process o f society as a whole. T h e life process is not bound up
w ith freedom but follows its own inherent necessity; and it can
be called free only in the sense that we speak o f a freely flow ing
stream . H ere freedom is not even the non-political aim o f
politics, but a m arginal phenom enon— w hich som ehow forms
the boundary governm ent should not overstep unless life itself
and its im m ediate interests and necessities are at stake.
T h u s not only we, w ho have reasons o f our own to distrust
politics for the sake o f freedom, but the entire m odern age has
separated freedom and politics. I could descend even deeper
into the past and evoke older memories and traditions. T h e
pre-m odern secular concept o f freedom certainly was em phatic
in its insistence on separating the subjects’ freedom from any
direct share in governm ent; the people’s ‘liberty and freedom
consisted in having the governm ent o f those laws by w hich
their life and their goods m ay be most their ow n ’— as C harles I
sum med it up in his speech from the scaffold. It was not out o f
a desire for freedom that people even tually dem anded their
share in governm ent or adm ission to the political realm , but
out o f m istrust in those w ho held pow er over their life and
goods. T h e C hristian concept o f political freedom , m oreover,
arose out o f the early C h ristian s’ suspicion and hostility
against the public realm as such, from whose concerns they
dem anded to be absolved in order to be free. A n d does not this
C hristian definition o f freedom as freedom from politics only
repeat w hat we know so w ell from ancient philosophy,
nam ely, the philosopher’s dem and o f oxoXri, o f ‘leisure’ , or
rather o f abstention from politics w hich since Plato and
A ristotle was held to be a prerequisite for the Jttoc;
08(OQriTLx6g, the philosopher’s ‘contem plative life’, only
that now the Christians dem anded for all, for ‘the m an y’,
w hat the philosophers had asked for only ‘the few ’ .
D espite the enormous w eight o f this tradition and despite
the perhaps even m ore telling urgency o f our own experiences,
both pressing into the sam e direction o f a divorce o f freedom
from politics, I think you all believed you heard not m ore than
an old truism when I first said that the raison d'etre o f politics is
freedom and that this freedom is prim arily experienced in
 Freedom and Politics 63
action. In the following, w e shall do no m ore than reflect on
this old truism.

Freedom as related to politics is not a phenom enon o f the w ill.

W e deal here not w ith the liberum arbitrium, a freedom o f choice
that arbitrates and decides betw een two given things, one
good and one evil, as, for exam ple, R ich ard I I I determ ined to
be a villain. R ath er it is, to rem ain w ith Shakespeare, the
freedom o f Brutus: ‘T h a t this shall be or w e w ill fall for it5,
that is, the freedom to call som ething into being w hich did
not exist before, w hich w as not given, not even as an object
o f cognition or im agination, and w hich therefore strictly
speaking could not be known. W h a t guides this act is
not a future aim w hose desirability the intellect has grasped
before the w ill w ills it, w hereby the intellect calls upon the
w ill since only the w ill can dictate action— to p araphrase a
characteristic description o f this process by D uns Scotus:
T ntellectus apprehendit agibile antequam voluntas illud
velit; sed non apprehendit determ inate hoc esse agendum
quod apprehendere dicitur d icta re5 (O xon . I V , d. 46, qu. 1,
no. 10.). A ction, to be sure, has an aim , but this aim
varies and depends upon the changing circum stances o f the
world; to recognize the aim is not a m atter o f freedom , but
o f right or w rong judgem ent. W ill, seen as a distinct and
separate hum an faculty, follows ju d gem en t, i.e. cognition o f
the right aim , and then com m ands its execution. T h e pow er to
com m and, to dictate action, is not a m atter o f freedom , but
a question o f strength or weakness.
A ction in so far as it is free is neither under the guidance o f
the intellect nor under the dictate o f the w ill, although it needs
both for the execution o f any p articular goal. A ctio n springs
from som ething altogether different w hich (follow ing M o n tes-
quieu's fam ous analysis o f forms o f governm ent) I shall call a
principle. Principles can inspire, but they cannot prescribe a
particular result in the sense w hich is required for carryin g out
a program m e. U nlike the ju d gem en t o f the intellect w hich
precedes action, and unlike the com m and o f the w ill w hich
64 Hannah Arendt
initiates it, the inspiring principle becom es fully m anifest only
in the perform ing act itself, w hich, how ever, does not exhaust
its validity. T h e principle o f an action, in distinction from its
goal, can be repeated time and again; it is inexhaustible and
rem ains manifest as long as the action lasts, but no longer.
Such principles are honour or glory, love o f equality, w hich
M ontesquieu called virtue, or distinction or excellence— the
G reek aei aQioxEveiv (‘alw ays strive to do your best
and to be the best o f a ll’)— and also fear or distrust or hatred.
Freedom or its opposite appear in the w orld w henever such
principles are actualized; the appearance o f freedom , like the
m anifestation o f principles, coincides w ith the perform ing act.
M en are free— as distinguished from their possessing the gift
for freedom— as long as they act, neither before nor after; for
to be free and to act are the same.
Freedom as inherent in action is perhaps best illustrated by
M a ch ia velli’s concept o f virtu, the excellence w ith w hich m an
answers the opportunities the w orld opens up before him in
the guise o f fortuna , and w hich is neither R om an virtus nor our
virtue. It is perhaps best translated by ‘virtu osity’, that is, an
excellence we attribute to the perform ing arts (as distinguished
from the creative arts o f m akin g), w here the accom plishm ent
lies in the perform ance itself and not in an end product w hich
outlasts the activity that brought it into existence and
becomes independent o f it. T h e virtuoso-ship o f M a ch ia ve lli’s
virtu som ehow reminds us o f the G reek notion o f virtue,
a££TT|, or ‘excellence’, although M ach iavelli hard ly knew
that the G reeks alw ays used m etaphors like flute playing,
dancing, healing, and seafaring to distinguish political from
other activities, that is, that they drew their analogies from
those arts in w hich virtuosity o f perform ance is decisive.
Since all acting contains an elem ent o f virtuosity, and
because virtuosity is the excellence we ascribe to the perform -
ing arts, politics has often been defined as an art. T h is, o f
course, is not a definition but a m etaphor, and the m etaphor
becomes com pletely false if one falls into the com m on error o f
regarding the state or governm ent as a w ork o f art, as a kind o f
collective m asterpiece. In the sense o f the creative arts, w hich
bring forth som ething tangible and reify hum an thought to
such an extent that the produced thing possesses an existence
 Freedom and Politics 65
o f its own, politics is the exact opposite o f art— w hich
incidentally does not m ean that it is a science. Political
institutions, no m atter how w ell or how badly designed,
depend for continued existence upon acting men; their
conservation is achieved by the sam e means that brought
them into being. Independent existence m arks the w ork o f art
as a product o f m aking; utter dependence upon further acts to
keep it in existence marks the state as a product o f action.
T h e point here is not w hether the creative artist is free in
the process o f creation, but that the creative process is not
displayed in public and not destined to appear in the w orld.
H ence, the element o f freedom, certainly present in the
creative arts, remains hidden; it is not the free creative process
w hich finally appears and m atters for the w orld, but the w ork
o f art itself, the end product o f the process. T h e perform ing
arts, on the contrary, have indeed a certain affinity w ith
politics. Perform ing artists— dancers, play-artists, m usicians,
and the like— need an audience to show their virtuosity, ju st
as acting men need the presence o f others before w hom they
can appear; both need a p ub licly organized space for their
‘w ork5 and both depend upon others for the perform ance
itself. Such a space o f appearances is not to be taken for
granted w herever men live together in a com m unity. T h e
G reek polis once was precisely that ‘form o f governm ent’
w hich provided men with a space o f appearances w here they
could act, with a kind o f theatre w here freedom could
appear.
I hope you w ill find it neither arbitrary nor far-fetched if I
use the w ord ‘political’ in the sense o f the G reek polis. N ot
only etym ologically and not only for the learned does the very
w ord, w hich in all European languages still derives from the
historically unique organization o f the G reek city-state, echo
the experiences o f the com m unity w hich first discovered the
essence and the realm o f the political. It is indeed difficult and
even m isleading to talk about politics and its innerm ost
principles w ithout draw ing to some extent upon the experi-
ences o f G reek and Rom an antiquity, and this for no other
reason than that men have never, either before or after,
thought so highly o f political activity and bestowed so m uch
dignity upon its realm. A s regards our present concern, the
66 Hannah Arendt
relation o f freedom to politics, there is the additional reason
that only ancient political com m unities w ere founded for the
express purpose to serve the free— those w ho w ere neither
slaves, subject to coercion by others, nor labourers, driven and
urged on by the necessities o f life. If, then, we understand the
political in the sense o f the polis, its end or raison d'etre w ould
be to establish and keep in existence a space w here freedom as
virtuosity can appear. T h is is the realm where freedom is a
w orldly reality, tangible in words w hich can be heard, in
deeds w hich can be seen, and in events w hich are talked about
and turned into stories before they are rem em bered and in-
corporated into the great storybook o f hum an history.
W hatever occurs in this space o f appearances is political by
definition, even when it is not a direct product o f action. W h at
remains outside it, such as the great feats o f barbarian
em pires, m ay be im pressive and noteworthy, but it is not
political, strictly speaking.
T hese conceptions o f freedom and politics and their m utual
relation seem so strange because we usually understand
freedom either as free w ill or free thought, while, on the other
hand, we im pute to politics the concern for the m aintenance o f
life and safeguarding o f its interests. Y e t even we, preoccupied
as we apparently are w ith the concern for life, still know that
courage is am ong the cardinal political virtues. C ou rage is a
big word, and I do not m ean the daring o f adventure w hich
gladly risks life for the sake o f being as thoroughly and
intensely alive as one can be only in the face o f danger and
death. Tem erity is no less concerned w ith life than cowardice.
C ourage, w hich we still believe to be indispensable for
political action, and w hich C hu rch ill once called ‘the first o f
hum an qualities, because it is the q uality w hich guarantees all
others’ , does not gratify our individual sense o f vitality but is
dem anded o f us by the very nature o f the public realm . For
this w orld o f ours, because it existed before us and is m eant to
outlast our lives in it, sim ply cannot afford to give prim ary
concern to individual lives and the interests connected w ith
them; as such the public realm stands in the sharpest possible
contrast to our private dom ain where, in the protection o f
fam ily and home, everything serves and must serve the
security o f the life process. It requires courage even to leave
 Freedom and Politics 67
the protective security o f our four w alls and enter the public
realm , not because o f p articular dangers w hich m ay or m ay
not lie in w ait for us, but because w e have arrived in a realm
where the concern for life has lost its validity. C ou rage
liberates men from their w orry about life for the freedom o f the
world. C ourage is indispensable because in politics not life but
the w orld is at stake, a w orld about w hich w e have to decide
how it is going to look and to sound and in w hat shape we
w ant it to outlast us.
Those therefore who, in spite o f all theories, still think o f
freedom when they hear the w ord ‘p olitics’ , w ill not believe
that the political is only the sum total o f private interests and
that therefore it is the task o f politics to check and balance
their conflicts; nor are they likely to hold that the role o f
governm ent is sim ilar to that o f a paterfam ilias. In both
instances, politics is incom patible w ith freedom. Freedom is
the raison d'etre o f politics only if it designs a realm w hich is
public and therefore not m erely distinguished from, but even
opposed to, the private realm and its interests.

3
O b viously, this notion o f an interdependence o f freedom and
politics stands in contradiction to the social theories o f the
modern age. U nfortunately, it does not follow that we need
only to revert to older pre-m odern traditions and theories.
Indeed, the greatest difficulty in reaching an understanding o f
the relation o f freedom to politics arises from the fact that a
sim ple return to tradition, and especially to w hat we are w ont
to call the great tradition, does not help us. N either the
philosophical concept o f freedom as it first arose in late
antiquity, where freedom becam e a phenom enon o f thought
by w hich m an could, as it were, reason him self out o f the
w orld, nor the C hristian and m odern notion o f free w ill have
any ground in political experience. O u r philosophical tradition
is alm ost unanim ous in holding that freedom begins where
men have left the realm o f political life inhabited by the m any,
and that it is not experienced in association w ith others but in
intercourse with oneself— w hether in the form o f an inner
68 Hannah Arendt
dialogue w hich, since Socrates, we call thinking, or a conflict
w ithin myself, the inner strife betw een w hat I w ould and w hat
I do, whose m urderous dialectics disclosed first to Paul and
then to A ugustine the equivocalities and im potence o f the
hum an heart.
For the history o f the problem o f freedom , C h ristian
tradition has indeed becom e the decisive factor. W e alm ost
autom atically equate freedom w ith free w ill, that is, w ith a
faculty virtu ally unknown to classical antiquity. For w ill, as
C hristian ity discovered it, had so little in com m on w ith the
w ell-know n capacities to desire and intend that it claim ed
attention only after it had come into conflict w ith them. I f
freedom were actually nothing but a phenom enon o f the w ill,
we w ould have to conclude that the ancients did not know
freedom. T h is, o f course, is absurd, but if one w ished to assert
it he could argue that the idea o f freedom played no role in the
works o f the great philosophers prior to A ugustine. T h e
reason for this striking fact is that, in G reek as w ell as Rom an
antiquity, freedom was an exclusively political concept,
indeed the quintessence o f the city-state and o f citizenship.
O u r philosophical tradition, beginning w ith Parm enides and
Plato, was founded explicitly in opposition to this polis and
this citizenship. T h e w ay o f life chosen by the philosopher
w as understood in opposition to the jStog JtoXmxog, the
political w ay o f life. Freedom , therefore, the very centre o f
politics as the G reeks understood it, w as an idea w hich alm ost
by definition could not enter the fram ew ork o f G reek
philosophy. O n ly when the early C hristians, and especially
Paul, discovered a kind o f freedom w hich had no relation to
politics, could the concept o f freedom enter the history o f
philosophy. Freedom becam e one o f the ch ief problem s o f
philosophy when it was experienced as som ething occurring in
the intercourse between me w ith myself, and outside o f the
intercourse between men. Free w ill and freedom becam e
synonym ous notions,3 and the presence o f freedom was

3 Leibniz only sums up and articulates the C hristian tradition when he

writes: ‘Die Frage, ob unserem W illen Freiheit zukommt, bedeutet
eigentlich nichts anderes, al ob ihm “W illen” zukommt. Die Ausdriicke
“frei” und “willensgemass” besagen dasselbe.’ (Schriften zur Metapfcysik, i,
Bemerkungen zu dem cartesischen Prinzipien. Zu Artikel 39 .)
 Freedom and Politics 69
experienced in com plete solitude ‘w here no m an m ight hinder
the hot contention w herein I had engaged w ith m y se lf, the
deadly conflict w hich took place in the ‘inner dw elling’ o f the
soul and the dark ‘cham ber o f the h eart’ (Augustine,
Confessiones, book viii, ch. 8).
In view o f the extraordinary potential pow er inherent in the
w ill— w ill and w ill-pow er are indeed alm ost identical notions4—
we tend to forget the historical fact that the phenom enon o f
the w ill originally did not m anifest itself as I-w ill-and-I-can,
but, on the contrary, in a conflict between the two, in the
experience that w hat I w ould I do not. W h at w as unknown to
antiquity w as precisely that I-w ill and I-can are not the
sam e — ‘ non hoc est velle, quod posse’ (Augustine, loc. cit.). For the
I-w ill-and-I-can was o f course very fam iliar to the ancients.
W e need only rem em ber how m uch Plato insisted that only
those who know how to rule themselves had the right to rule
others and be freed from the obligation o f obedience. A n d it is
true that self-control has rem ained one o f the specifically
political virtues, if only because it is an outstanding
phenom enon o f virtuosity w here I-w ill and I-can m ust be so
w ell attuned that they p ractically coincide.
H ad ancient philosophy known o f a possible conflict
between w hat I can and w hat I w ill, it w ould certainly have
understood the phenom enon o f freedom as an inherent q uality
o f the I-can, or it m ight conceivably have defined it as the
coincidence o f I-w ill and I-can; it certainly w ould not have
thought o f it as an attribute o f the I-w ill or I-w ould. T h is
assertion is no em pty speculation; i f we wish to check it we
need only to read M ontesquieu, whose thought followed so
closely the political thought o f the ancients, and w ho therefore
was so deeply aw are o f the inadequacy o f the C hristian and
the philosophers’ concept o f freedom for political purposes.

4 Augustine, in the famous chapters about will in his Confessions, stresses

already the great power inherent in will: ‘Im perat . . . et paretur statim ’, ‘it
commands . . . and is immediately obeyed’; the ‘monstrosity’ that man
might command himself and not be obeyed arises from the fact that ‘to will’
and ‘to com m and’ are the same— ‘in tantum im perat in quantum vult, et in
tantum non fit quod imperat, in quantum non vult’. (‘In so far as the mind
commands, the mind wills, and in so far the thing commanded is not done,
it wills not,’ book v i i i , ch. 9 ).
70 Hannah Arendt
H e expressly distinguished between philosophical and political
freedom, and the difference consisted in that philosophy
dem ands no more o f freedom than the exercise o f the w ill
{Vexercice de la volonte), independent o f circum stances and o f
attainm ent o f the goals the w ill has set. Political freedom , on
the contrary, consists in being able to do w hat one ought to
w ill(7 a liberte ne pent consister qu’a pouvoir faire ce que Von doit
vouloir’) (Esprit des lois, xn. 2 and xi. 3). For M ontesquieu as
for the ancients it w as obvious that an agent could no longer
be called free w hen he lacked the cap acity to do— w hereby it is
irrelevant w hether this failure is caused b y exterior or by
interior circum stances.
I chose the exam ple o f self-control because to us this is
clearly a phenom enon o f w ill and o f w ill-pow er. T h e Greeks,
m ore than any other people, have reflected on m oderation and
the necessity to tam e the steeds o f the soul, and yet they never
becam e aw are o f the w ill as a distinct faculty, separate from
other hum an capacities. H istorically, men first discovered the
w ill when they experienced its im potence and not its pow er,
when they said w ith Paul: Tor to w ill is present w ith me; but
how to perform that w hich is good I find not’ . It is the sam e
w ill o f w hich A ugustine com plained that it seemed ‘no
monstrousness [for it] partly to w ill, p artly to nilP; and
although he points out that this is ‘a disease o f the m ind5, he
also adm its that this disease is, as it were, natural for a m ind
possessed o f a w ill, ‘For the w ill com m ands that there w ill be a
w ill, it com m ands not som ething else but i t s e lf . . . W ere the
w ill entire, it w ould not even com m and itself to be, because it
w ould already b e.’ In other words, if m an has a w ill at all, it
m ust alw ays appear as though there w ere two w ills present in
the sam e man, fighting w ith each other for pow er over his
m ind ( Confessiones, vm . 9). H ence, the w ill is both powerful
and im potent, free and unfree.
W hen we speak o f im potence and the lim its set to w ill-
power, w e u sually think o f m an’s powerlessness w ith respect
to the surrounding world. It is, therefore, o f some im portance
to notice that in these early testimonies the w ill w as not
defeated by some overw helm ing force o f nature or circum -
stances; the contention w hich its appearance raised was
neither the conflict between the one against the m any nor the
 Freedom and Politics 71
strife between body and mind. O n the contrary, the relation o f
m ind to body was for A ugustine even the outstanding exam ple
for the enorm ous pow er inherent in the will: ‘T h e m ind
com m ands the body, and the body obeys instantly; the m ind
com m ands itself, and is resisted5 (ibid.). T h e body represents
in this context the exterior w orld and is by no m eans identical
w ith one’s self. It is w ithin one’s self, in the ‘interior dw ellin g’
(;interior domus), w here Epictetus still believed m an to be an
absolute master, that the conflict betw een m an and him self
broke out and the w ill w as defeated. C hristian w ill-pow er was
discovered as an organ o f self-liberation and im m ediately
found wanting. It is as though the I-w ill im m ediately
paralysed the I-can, as though the m om ent men willed
freedom, they lost their cap acity to be free. In the deadly
conflict w ith w orldly desires and intentions from w hich w ill-
pow er w as supposed to liberate the self, the most w illin g
seemed able to achieve was oppression. Because o f the w ill’s
im potence, its incapacity to generate genuine pow er, its
constant defeat in the struggle w ith the self, in w hich the
pow er o f the I-can exhausted itself, the w ill-to-pow er turned
at once into a will-to-oppression. I can only hint here at the
fatal consequences for political theory o f this equation o f
freedom w ith the hum an cap acity to will; it was one o f the
causes w hy even today we alm ost autom atically equate pow er
w ith oppression or at least rule over others.
H ow ever that m ay be, w hat we usually understand b y w ill
and w ill-pow er has grow n out o f this conflict betw een a w illin g
and a perform ing self, out o f the experience o f an I-w ill-and-
can not, w hich means that the I-w ill, no m atter w hat is w illed,
rem ains subject to the self, strikes back at it, spurs it on,
incites it further, or is ruined b y it. H ow far the w ill-to-pow er
m ay reach out, and even if som ebody possessed by it begins to
conquer the w hole w orld, the I-w ill can never rid itself o f the
self; it alw ays remains bound to it and, indeed, under its
bondage. T h is bondage to the self distinguishes the I-w ill from
the I-think, w hich also is carried on betw een me and m yself
but in whose dialogue the self is not the subject o f the activity
o f thought. T h e fact that the I-w ill has becom e so pow er-
thirsty, that w ill and w ill-to-pow er have becom e p ractically
identical, is perhaps due to its having been first experienced in
72 Hannah Arendt
its im potence. T y ran n y at any rate, the only form o f
governm ent w hich arises directly out o f the I-w ill, owes its
greedy cruelty to an egotism utterly absent from the utopian
tyrannies o f reason w ith w hich the philosophers w ished to
coerce men and w hich they conceived on the m odel o f the I-
think.
I have said that the philosophers first began to show an
interest in the problem o f freedom w hen freedom w as no
longer experienced in acting and associating w ith others but
in w illing and the intercourse w ith one’s self, w hen, briefly,
freedom had becom e free w ill. Since then, freedom has been a
philosophical problem o f the first order; as such it w as applied
to the political realm and thus has becom e a political problem
as well. Because o f the philosophic shift from action to w ill-
power, from freedom as a state o f being m anifest in action to
the liberum arbitrium, the ideal o f freedom ceased to be
virtuosity in the sense w e m entioned before and becam e
sovereignty, the ideal o f a free w ill, independent from others
and eventually prevailing against them. T h e philosophic
ancestry o f our current political notion o f freedom is still quite
m anifest in eighteenth-century political w riters, w hen, for
instance, T h om as Paine insisted that ‘to be free it is sufficient
[for man] that he w ills it’ , a w ord w hich L afayette applied to
the nation state: ‘pour q u ’une nation soit libre, il suffit q u ’elle
veuille l’etre.’5 Politically, this identification o f freedom w ith
sovereignty is perhaps the most pernicious and dangerous
consequence o f the philosophical equation o f freedom and free
will. For it leads either to a denial o f hum an freedom — nam ely
i f it is realized that w hatever men m ay be, they are never
sovereign— or to the insight that the freedom o f one m an or a
group or a body politic can only be purchased at the price o f
the freedom, i.e. the sovereignty, o f all others. W ith in the
conceptual fram ework o f traditional philosophy, it is indeed
very difficult to understand how freedom and non-sovereignty

5 Among modern political theorists, Carl Schm itt has remained the most
consistent and the most able defender of the notion of sovereignty. He
recognizes clearly that the root of sovereignty is the will: Sovereign is who
wills and commands. See especially his Verfassungslere (M unich, 1928),
7 ff., 146.
 Freedom and Politics 73
can exist together or, to put it another w ay, how freedom
could have been given to men under the condition o f non-
sovereignty. A ctu ally, it is as unrealistic to deny freedom
because o f the fact o f hum an non-sovereignty as it is
dangerous to believe that one can be free— as an individual or
as a group— only if one is sovereign. T h e fam ous sovereignty
o f political bodies has alw ays been an illusion w hich,
m oreover, can be m aintained only by the instrum ents o f
violence, that is, w ith essentially non-political m eans. U nd er
hum an conditions, w hich are determ ined by the fact that not
m an but men live on the earth, freedom and sovereignty are so
little identical that they cannot even exist sim ultaneously.
W here men wish to be sovereign, as individuals or as
organized groups, they m ust subm it to the oppression o f the
w ill, be this the individual w ill w ith w hich I force m yself or the
‘general w ill’ o f an organized group. I f men w ish to be free, it
is precisely sovereignty they m ust renounce.

4
Since the whole problem o f freedom arises for us in the
horizon o f C hristian traditions on the one hand and o f an
originally anti-political philosophic tradition on the other, we
find it difficult to realize that there m ay exist a freedom w hich
is not an attribute o f the w ill but an accessory o f doing and
acting. L et us therefore go back once m ore to antiquity, i.e., to
its political and pre-philosophical traditions, certainly not for
the sake o f erudition and not even because o f the continuity o f
our traditions, but m erely because a freedom experienced in
the process o f acting and nothing else— though, o f course,
m ankind never lost this experience altogether— has never
again been articulated w ith the sam e classical clarity.
T h is articulation is ultim ately rooted in the curious fact that
both the G reek and the L atin language possess two verbs to
designate w hat we uniform ly call ‘to a ct’ . T h e two G reek
words are a to begin, to lead, and, finally, to rule, and
jTQaxxeiv: to carry som ething through. T h e correspond-
ing L atin verbs are agere: to set som ething in m otion, and
gerere, w hich is hard to translate and som ehow m eans the
74 Hannah Arendt
enduring and supporting continuation o f past acts w hich
result in the res gestae, the deeds and events w e call historical.
In both instances, action occurs in two different stages; its first
stage is a beginning by w hich som ething new comes into the
world. T h e G reek w ord a q %z w w hich covers beginning,
leading, and even ruling, that is, the outstanding qualities o f
the free man, bears witness to an experience in w hich being
free and the capacity to begin som ething new coincided.
Freedom , as we w ould say today, w as experienced in
spontaneity. T h e m anifold m eaning o f 6 indicates the
following: only those could begin som ething new w ho w ere
already rulers (i.e. household heads w ho ruled over slaves and
fam ily) and had thus liberated them selves from the necessities
o f life for enterprises in distant lands or citizenship in the
polis; in either case, they no longer ruled, but w ere rulers
am ong rulers, m oving am ong their peers whose help they
enlisted as their leaders in order to begin som ething new, to
start a new enterprise; for only w ith the help o f others could
the a Q%wv, the ruler, beginner, and leader, really act,
j t q (x t t £i v , carry through w hatever he had started to do.
In L atin, to be free and to begin are also interconnected,
though in a different w ay. Rom an freedom w as a legacy
bequeathed by the founders o f Rom e to the R om an people;
their freedom was tied to the beginning their forefathers had
established by founding the C ity , whose affairs the descendants
had to m anage, whose consequences they had to bear, and
whose foundations they had to ‘augm en t’ . A ll these together
are the res gestae o f the Rom an republic. Rom an historiography
therefore, essentially as political as G reek historiography,
never w as content w ith the mere narration o f great deeds and
events; unlike T h u cydides or H erodotus, the R om an historians
alw ays felt bound to the beginning o f R om an history, because
this beginning contained the authentic elem ent o f R om an
freedom and thus m ade their history political; w hatever they
had to relate, they started ad urbe condita, w ith the foundation
o f the C ity, the guarantee o f Rom an freedom.
I have already m entioned that the ancient concept o f
freedom played no role in G reek philosophy precisely because
o f its exclusively political origin. Rom an w riters, it is true
rebelled occasionally against the anti-political tendencies o f
 Freedom and Politics 75
the Socratic school, but their strange lack o f philosophic talent
apparently prevented their finding a theoretical concept o f
freedom w hich could have been adequate to their own
experiences and to the great institutions o f liberty present in
the Rom an res republica. I f the history o f ideas w ere as
consistent as its historians sometimes im agine, we should have
even less hope to find a valid political idea o f freedom in
A ugustine, the great C hristian thinker w ho in fact introduced
P au l’s free will, along w ith its perplexities, into the history o f
philosophy. Y e t we find in A ugustin e not only the discussion
o f freedom as liberum arbitrium, though this discussion becam e
decisive for the tradition, but also an entirely differently
conceived notion w hich characteristically appears in his only
political treatise, in D e civitate Dei. In the City o f God,
Augustine, as is only natural, speaks m ore from the background
o f specifically Rom an experiences than in any o f his other
w ritings, and freedom is conceived there, not as an inner
hum an disposition, but as a character o f hum an existence in
the world. M an does not possess freedom so m uch as he, or
better his com ing into the w orld, is equated w ith the
appearance o f freedom in the universe; m an is free because he
is a beginning and was so created after the universe had
already come into existence: ‘ [In itiu m ju t esset, creatus est
homo, ante quem nemo fu it’ (book xn, ch. 20). In the birth o f
each m an this initial beginning is reaffirm ed, because in each
instance som ething new comes into an already existing w orld
which w ill continue to exist after each in d ivid u al’s death.
Because he is a beginning, m an can begin; to be hum an and to
be free are one and the same. G od created m an in order to
introduce into the w orld the faculty o f beginning: freedom.
T h e strong anti-political tendencies o f early C h ristian ity are
so fam iliar that the notion that a C hristian thinker was the
first to form ulate the philosophical im plications o f the ancient
political idea o f freedom strikes us as alm ost paradoxical. T h e
only explanation seems to be that A ugustin e w as a R om an as
w ell as a C hristian, and that in this part o f his w ork he
form ulated the central political experience o f R om an antiquity,
w hich was that freedom qua beginning becam e m anifest in the
act o f foundation. Y et, I am convinced that this im pression
w ould considerably change if the sayings o f Jesus o f N azareth
76 Hannah Arendt
w ere taken more seriously in their philosophic im plications.
W e find in these parts o f the N ew Testam ent an extraordinary
u nderstanding o f freedom and particularly o f the pow er
inherent in hum an freedom; but the hum an cap acity w hich
corresponds to this power, w hich, in the w ords o f the gospel, is
capable o f rem oving m ountains, is not w ill but faith. T h e w ork
o f faith, actually its product, is w hat the gospels called
‘m iracles’, a w ord w ith m any m eanings in the N ew T estam en t
and difficult to understand. W e can neglect the difficulties
here and refer only to those passages w here m iracles are
clearly not supernatural events— although all m iracles, those
perform ed by men no less than those perform ed by a divine
agent, interrupt a natural series o f events or autom atic
processes in whose context they constitute the w holly un-
expected.
I f it is true that action and beginning are essentially the
sam e, it follows that a cap acity for perform ing m iracles m ust
likewise be w ithin the range o f hum an faculties. T h is sounds
stranger than it actually is. It is in the nature o f every new
beginning that it breaks into the w orld w holly unexpected and
unforeseen, at least from the view point o f the processes it
interrupts. E very event, the m om ent it comes to pass, strikes
us w ith surprise as though it w ere a m iracle. It m ay w ell be a
prejudice to consider m iracles m erely in religious contexts as
supernatural, w holly inexplicable occurrences. It m ay be
better not to forget that, after all, our w hole existence rests, as
it were, on a chain o f m iracles, the com ing into being o f the
earth, the developm ent o f organic life on it, the evolution o f
m ankind out o f the anim al species. For from the view point o f
processes in the universe and their statistically overw helm ing
probabilities, the com ing into being o f the earth is an ‘infinite
im p rob ab ility5, as the natural scientists w ould say, a m iracle
as w e m ight call it. T h e sam e is true for the form ation o f
organic life out o f inorganic processes or for the evolution o f
m an out o f the processes o f organic life. E ach o f these events
appears to us like a m iracle the m om ent we look at it from the
view point o f the processes it interrupted. T h is view point,
m oreover, is by no means arbitrary or sophisticated; it is, on
the contrary, most natural and indeed, in ordinary life, alm ost
com m onplace.
 Freedom and Politics 77
I chose this exam ple to illustrate that w hat w e call ‘real5 in
ordinary experience has come into existence through the
advent o f infinite im probabilities. O f course, it has its
lim itations and cannot sim ply be applied to the realm o f
hum an affairs. For there we are confronted w ith historical
processes where one event follows the others, w ith the result
that the m iracle o f accident and infinite im p robability occurs
so frequently that it seems strange to speak o f m iracles at all.
H ow ever, the reason for this frequency is m erely that
historical processes are created and constantly interrupted by
hum an initiative. I f one considers historical processes only as
processes, devoid o f hum an initiative, then every new
beginning in it [history], for better or worse, becom es so
infinitely unlikely as to be w ell-nigh inexplicable. O b jectively,
that is, seen from the outside, the chances that tom orrow w ill
be like yesterday are alw ays overw helm ing. N ot quite so over-
w helm ing, o f course, but very nearly so as the chances are that
no earth w ould ever rise out o f cosm ic occurrences, that no life
w ould develop out o f inorganic processes, and that no m an
w ould ever develop out o f the evolution o f anim al life. T h e
decisive difference between the ‘infinite im probabilities’, on
w hich earthly life and the w hole reality o f nature rest, and the
m iraculous character o f historical events is obvious; in the
realm o f hum an affairs we know the author o f these ‘m iracles’ ;
it is men w ho perform them, nam ely, in so far as they have
received the twofold gift o f freedom and action.

5
From these last considerations, it should be easy to find our
w ay back to contem porary political experiences. It follows
from them, that the com bined danger o f totalitarianism and
mass society is not that the form er abolishes political freedom
and civil rights, and that the latter threatens to en g u lf all
culture, the w hole w orld o f durable things, and to abolish the
standards o f excellence w ithout w hich no thing can ever be
produced— although these dangers are real enough. Beyond
them we sense another even m ore dangerous threat, nam ely
78 Hannah Arendt
that both totalitarianism and mass society, the one by means
o f terror and ideology, the other by yielding w ithout violence
or doctrine to the general trend tow ard the socialization o f
man, are driven to stifle initiative and spontaneity as such,
that is, the elem ent o f action and freedom present in all
activities w hich are not mere labouring. O f these two,
totalitarianism still seems to be m ore dangerous, because it
attem pts in all earnest to elim inate the possibility o f ‘m iracles’
from the realm o f politics, or— in m ore fam iliar language— to
exclude the possibility o f events in order to deliver us entirely
to the autom atic processes by w hich w e are surrounded
anyhow . For our historical and political life takes place in the
m idst o f natural processes w hich, in turn, take place in the
m idst o f cosm ic processes, and w e ourselves are driven by very
sim ilar forces in so far as we, too, are a part o f organic nature.
It w ould be sheer superstition to hope for m iracles, for the
‘infinitely im probable’, in the context o f these autom atic
processes, although even this never can be com pletely
excluded. But it is not in the least superstitious, it is even a
counsel o f realism , to look for the unforeseeable and un-
predictable, to be prepared for and to expect ‘m iracles’ , in the
political realm w here in fact they are alw ays possible. H um an
freedom is not m erely a m atter o f m etaphysics but a m atter o f
fact, no less a reality, indeed, than the autom atic processes
w ithin and against w hich action alw ays has to assert itself. For
the processes set into m otion by action also tend to becom e
autom atic— w hich is w hy no single act and no single event can
ever once and for all deliver and save a m an, or a nation, or
m ankind.
It is in the nature o f the autom atic processes, to w hich m an
is subject and by w hich he w ould be ruled absolutely w ithout
the m iracle o f freedom, that they can only spell ruin to hum an
life; once historical processes have becom e autom atic, they are
no less ruinous than the life process that drives our organism
and w hich biologically can never lead anyw here but from
birth to death. T h e historical sciences know such cases o f
petrified and declining civilizations only too well, and they
know that the processs o f stagnation and decline can last and
go on for centuries. Q u an titatively, they occup y by far the
largest space in recorded history.
 Freedom and Politics 79
In the history o f m ankind, the periods o f being free w ere
alw ays relatively short. In the long epochs o f petrification and
autom atic developm ents, the faculty o f freedom , the sheer
cap acity to begin, w hich anim ates and inspires all hum an
activities, can o f course rem ain intact and produce a great
variety o f great and beautiful things, none o f them political.
T h is is probably w hy freedom has so frequently been defined
as a non-political phenom enon and eventually even as a
freedom from politics. Even the current liberal m isunder-
standing w hich holds that ‘perfect liberty is incom patible w ith
the existence o f society’, and that freedom is the price the
individual has to p ay for security, still has its authentic root in
a state o f affairs in w hich political life has becom e petrified
and political action im potent to interrupt autom atic processes.
U n d er such circum stances, freedom indeed is no longer
experienced as a m ode o f being w ith its own kind o f ‘virtu e’
and virtuosity, but as a suprem e gift w hich only man, o f all
earthly creatures, seems to have received, o f w hich w e can find
traces in alm ost all his activities, but w hich, nevertheless, can
develop fully only where action has created its own w orldly
space w here freedom can appear.
W e have alw ays known that freedom as a m ode o f being,
together w ith the public space w here it can unfold its full
virtuosity, can be destroyed. Since our acquaintan ce w ith
totalitarianism , we m ust fear that not only the state o f being
free but the sheer gift o f freedom, that w hich m an did not
m ake but w hich w as given to him, m ay be destroyed, too. T h is
fear, based on our know ledge o f the newest form o f governm ent,
and on our suspicion that it m ay yet prove to be the perfect
body politic o f a mass society, w eighs heavily on us under the
present circum stances. For today, m ore m ay depend on
hum an freedom than ever before— on m an ’s cap acity to turn
the scales w hich are heavily w eighed in favour o f disaster
w hich alw ays happens autom atically and therefore alw ays
appears to be irresistible. N o less than the continued existence
o f m ankind on earth m ay depend this time upon m an ’s gift to
‘perform m iracles’ , that is, to bring about the infinitely
im probable and establish it as reality.