LL305
Arendt Revision
Main Methodology; Phenomenology:
points/facts - ‘thought itself arises out of incidents of living experience and
must remain bound to them as the only guideposts by which to
take its bearings’ – how the world appears to us matters
- ‘a way of thinking employs neither history nor coercive logic as
crutches’ – we have to take situational experience very seriously,
as political thought has to take a stand in the present, not the
past
- Draws from experience and different phenomena and
distinguishes the,
- Phenomenology: Study of that which appears to the senses
(unlike Kant who studies the thing in itself, or the necessary
conditions for the thing to exist) but Arendt just wants to take
things as they appear to us
- She doesn’t want to do this by merely observing or empirical
collecting of data without meaning, but wants to understand
the meaning in how things appear to us
- Aim is to study properties and structure of experience and
consciousness; she believes determining human nature is futile as
we are human nature by virtue of existing
- We are conditions beings by our earthly surroundings, but we also
create our own conditions; possibility of such creation is
crucial to her standpoint
Vita contemplative v Vita Activa
- Critiques the entire tradition of Western philosophical thought as
neglecting the experience of ‘freedom in action’ ie Plato
believed what we are experiencing in the world might just be
illusion and the philosopher has to seek the real essence of things
but Arendt disputes this
- Idea of philosophy as achieving its pinnacle through
contemplation (ie the essence and appearance) has a negative
effect because it directs us in the wrong way; philosophers and
religion present this idea as freeing us from the everyday ie
sought freedom from political activity, escaping from reality
Rejects critical thinking of Marx; focuses on economy, social
relations of capitalism whereas Arendt seeks domain of politics
(the political phenomenon) which is crucial to human
understanding.
- Perception of history, through Marx, has a determinate future eg
from feudalism to capitalism and promised utopia of communism
- For Arendt, human affairs are much more contingent; human
existence is messy with no determinate path, nothing necessary
about what events follow from others
- We are conditioned by our creations but not determined by some
, extra-human features like nature, society, historical necessity –
conditions of human existence are conditions of possibility,
not necessity
- Politics is not merely super-structural or ideological (like in
Marx ideas); for Arendt it is basic, part of the human existence
- What Marx identifies as fundamental social relation based on
labour, is only one of three ways in which we interact; work,
labour, action
- Loss of freedom in late modernity is derived from a basic
mistake in philosophy:
- This is both a Marxist and Liberal critique as in mass society we
lose our individuality, although liberalism pretends to value
individuals it just reduces us to an abstract entity and in economic
liberalism it reduces us to a consumer, statistic
- She wants to rescue the political as when we lose politics we lost
freedom
- Marxist or liberal politics is but a function of society pursuing
aggregate interests
- She links this to ‘the rise of the social’ ie privacy of modern man
and his individualism paradoxically leads to deep, mass
conformity – it is this that alienates us, not capitalism per se,
alienation from our political selves and political
responsibility
- Sense of loss of freedom in conformist, mass society is something
Arendt lived through in her experience of Totalitarianism (German
Jew)
Politics is the antidote to loss of freedom:
- Social contract writers show a series of events of trying to escape
politics, through establishing a series of rights that protect us
from government; for the likes of Hobbes, Kant, such rights were
guarantees of security which made freedom possible, but such
freedom in this sense occurred outside the political realm
- Whereas we should be looking for freedom in the very
practice of politics, not as security against it; social contract
suggest that ideas can limit power but Arendt says only power can
check power which we have the capacity to do in our daily
experience ie building relations with others, making promises,
institutions, reciprocal ties with one another through contracts
and acts of political engagement – this is how we avoid tyrannical
regime, through action not ideas
- Building blocks of the political:
(i) Plurality: Key to the human condition and the reason why
politics is central to human life
- ‘plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the
same, that is human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same
as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live’ – unique as
individuals, plurality is the key to understanding that
- ‘action…corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the
, fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world’ if
there was such a thing as man in social realm, we wouldn’t need
politics, politics is crucial because we are not all the same
- Cannot find universal principles to iron out our differences,
politics accommodates for them
(ii) Action (vita activa): The experience of freedom together
with others
1) Labour (animal laborans): biological reproduction, necessary
for life itself
2) Work (homo faber): artificial existence, produce works of art,
make things, which is different from mere reproduction, we
produce things that are more than just about survival
3) Action (zoon politikon): the practice of ideas, we reveal who
we are in concert with others – the way we put theory into
practice; politics is experienced in this realm
- ‘Freedom… is actually the reason men live together in political
organisation at all. Without it, political life as such would be
meaningless’ The raison d’etre of politics is freedom, and its field
of experience is action
- Freedom is action, including speech eg dialogue with ourselves
when we think through courses of action; freedom is not choice of
alternatives, it’s the creation of those alternatives
- It is about the ’we can’ not ‘I will’ ; our capacity to create a new,
courage and taking a stand in the world – in these attempts we
are expressing ourselves
- Freedom is the capacity to begin, start something new, to do the
unexpected – human beings are unpredictable creatures so we
must expect the unexpected, politics cannot be predicted
(iii) Public realm (the agora): Space of action where we
appear to one another as equals
- We are liberated from necessity, labour and reproduction;
we appear as equals and can express our individuality
- Private household relations are analogous to master/slave,
hierarchy, economics derives from the household realm and can
make no sense of the public realm where we relate as equals
- ‘public realm was reserved for individuality’ – this was destroyed
by platonic philosophy and religion against political action
- In politics, not life, but ‘the world’ is at stake – ‘this world of ours,
because it existed before us and is meant to outlast our lives in it,
simply cannot afford to give primary concern to individual lives
and the interests connected with them; as such the public realm
stands in sharpest possible contrast to our private domain, where
in the protection of family and home, everything serves and must
serve the security of the life process’
Practical themes
How do we create and maintain the conditions for plurality, action
and the public?
