Following Heidegger, Hannah Arendt essentially undertook a phenomenological uncovering of the structures of human action qua existence and experience rather than abstract conceptual constructions or empirical generalizations about what people typically do. Arendt made a phenomenological reconstruction of the nature of the political, then elaborates on them and refines them.
Course: Political Philosophy
Professor: Fr. Luis David, SJ.
Saint
Joshep Jesuit Scholasticate - Vietnam
December
17, 2017
Introduction
Hannah
Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of
the twentieth century. The question with which Arendt engages most frequently
is the nature of politics and the political life. Following Heidegger, she
essentially undertook a phenomenological uncovering of the structures of human
action qua
existence and
experience rather than abstract conceptual constructions or empirical
generalizations about what people typically do. Arendt made a phenomenological reconstruction of the nature of
the political, then elaborates on them and refines them. In addition, because
Arendt lived in the times with some greatly crucial historical event such as
Nazism and Stalinism that caused holocaust for her nation, going along with a
great frigidity from people, she wanted to examine the historical and social forces that had come to
threaten the existence of an autonomous political realm, and supported an
authentic politics.[1]
In this
paper, I just focus on two basic concepts of her, politics and anti-politics,
in her two works, The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition.
I.
Anti-politic
Arendt’s
concept of anti-politics is presented through her analysis of the so-called
“the rise of the social” and the totalitarianism.
1.
The
rise of the social
a.
Distinguishing
between the private and the public
For
Arendt, “the rise of social” is one of reasons leading to an anti-politics.
Drawing on the Aristotelian distinction of the oikos (the private realm of the
household) from the polis (the
public realm of the political community),[2] Arendt wanted to distinguish
between her concept of politics and what is anti-politics. In the ancient
Greek, life was divided into two realms: the public and the private realm. In
the public sphere, action is performed and one could freely distinguish
oneself; there is pubic space for dialogue; it was the sphere of real freedom.
But the private sphere correspond to the household ruled by its head, in which
freedom do not exist, one is tied to the necessity and not be human fully.[3]
Then,
by that distinction, she solves the problem of misunderstanding and equating
the political and social Realms, that is an inquiry of what is real politics
and what is not. Since the rise of the ancient city-state, there always is the
distinction between a private and a public sphere of life corresponds to the
household and the political realms, but when the social realm has raised, it
has neither been private nor public.[4]
b.
What
is the rise of social?
So, for
Arendt, what is the rise of society or what is social realms? The rise of the
social is the rise of the "household" (oikia) or of economic activities
to the public realm; housekeeping and all matters pertaining formerly to the
private sphere of the family have become a "collective" concern.”[5] This means "society"
is where collective of families are economically organized into the superhuman
family.[6] The social realm is concerned
with providing for biological needs, but it does so at the level of the state,
it transforms the private care for private property into a public concern. In
this society, its members has only one opinion and one interest,[7] which were represented by the
household head.[8] In the market
economy, everything has become an object of production and consumption, of
acquisition and exchange.[9]
c.
Political
consequence of the rise of the social
Therefore,
once again, social realm is not the public realm which is really political
realm for Arendt. Considering man as social animal is anti-political. In that
‘society’, the old borderline between private and political is blurred; both of
two realms, private and public, are affected.[10] Human is tied to the necessity
so not be human fully, he is only as a specimen of the animal species man-kind.[11] Men became centered around the
one activity necessary to sustain life.[12] The new social realm
transformed all modern communities into societies of laborers and jobholders.
Society
also destroys the public ream which is condition for being a political being.
Politics is nothing but just a function of society, in which action, speech,
and thought are primarily superstructures upon social interest. He do not has
freedom. Society tend to "normalize" its members, to make them behave
without spontaneous action or outstanding achievement.[13] Human action
is not coming from an individual and independent decision but as a means to
adjust to the standards which exist within the society.
2. The
space of totalitarianism.
In The
Origins of Totalitarianism,
Hannah Arendt gives an analysis of the origins of communism and
fascism-terrorism (both as totalitarianism), which cause the holocaust for the
Jews. She call these kinds of politics as anti-politics.
a.
Contemporary
social phenomenon
At
first, the reason that make the thought of totalitarianism being accepted is that of the historical situation at
that time. In that situation, the masses and mob emerged, who did not
believe in anything visible but just believed in something as
imaginations. “What convinces masses are
not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system
of which they are presumably part.”[14] They want “to escape from
reality because in their essential homelessness they can no longer bear its
accidental, incomprehensible aspects”, they have a borderline experience of
loneliness which they usually suffered. They long for fiction, something is
superior to mere occurrence.[15]
b.
The
demagogic propaganda and terror
In that
very real history, the mob “be attracted by the momentum of totalitarian
itself” naturally, and totalitarian movement used propaganda and terror to
control and dominate the masses. In totalitarian countries, propaganda and terror
go together as two sides of the same coin.[16] Propaganda is part of
"psychological warfare", an instrument of
totalitarianism for dealing with the non-totalitarian world. On the contrary,
terror is the very essence of its form of government… killing small socialist
functionaries or influential members of opposing parties.[17] Totalitarianism keep their own
goal secret and demagogue their citizen by introducing unrealistic
ideal which fit the characteristics of the masses.
c.
Political
human
right in totalitarian countries
When
total movement is realized into total state, terror is used to govern the
organization. It clearly shows its characteristics which Arendt call
anti-political. The ultimate goal of this politics is not for human but
rather for the
fabrication of mankind. They ready to “eliminates individuals for the sake of
the species, sacrifices the “pars” for the sake of the “whole”".[18] They want to eliminate every
competing non-totalitarian reality by terror for they want to control totally.
Sarcastically
speaking,
freedom of opinion was not abolished in this total state, but it is just for
those who were brave enough to risk their necks, and voluntary to get
"punishment".[19] That make citizens do not have
opinions about, and interests in, the handling of public affairs.[20]
Furthermore,
total terror substitutes for
communication between men, which makes men becomes adherent as one man. There
is just one individual, that is, every person be reduced to a never changing
identity of reactions, these reactions be exchanged at random for any other.[21] They destroy the space between
men and there is no contact between them. In this organization, there is no
plurality, and there is no new beginning too. Terror forces man into the
movement of history or nature, which supposedly uses humankind as its material,
he is as an animal laborans, for he
does not have public space to action.[22]
In
addition, in The Human Condition,
Arendt continually present another analysis of totalitarian, as Anti-political.
She cover some historical events such as the discover and exploration of the
whole earth, mapping all the land. Moreover, there is technical invention, such
as the telescope, through which all earthly space has become small and nearby.
However, all of those things make a greater distance between himself and his
surroundings, alienating man from world or earth.[23] Humans are no longer
discovering themselves and know what reality is instead of just knowing its
shadows. They just
know more information instead of coming to meet and have real communication
with each other.
In short, those ideologies go along with the expansion of
colonial imperialism and the bourgeoisie. They are as pathology eroding the
public environment as the space for personal freedom, action, and disclosure;
limiting the plurality; attaching humans to the necessary needs and structure
organization. In short, those kinds of politics are not for the right of men,
for the fully development of one as a human beings, which is the anti of a
genuine political being analyzed hereafter.
II. Politic
Obviously,
Arendt firstly critique of the so-called ‘anti-politics’ bear her concept of
what is real politics as a standard value. This ideology had been continually
developed until her death, particularly in book of The Human Condition [1958]. Her politics come from her
phenomenological approach of human beings as active beings. She
went on to establish conditions for political experience by philosophy of
reconstruction; coming back to the source of Greek political philosophy and
democracy to understand the human as active beings (vita Activa), which is
distorted in modern times which considers
it as subordinated to and becomes instrumental for the ends of the ideas.[24] This does not mean that truth
and knowledge were no longer important, but that they could be won only by
"action" and not by contemplation.[25]
1. Vita
Activa: Labor, Work, Action
She
divides human activity into three kinds: labor, work, and action, according to
hierarchy of important. She affirms that the modern has reversed the
order of these kinds of actions.
a.
Labor:
Humanity as Animal Laborans
Labor
is the first and lowest step of action, which expresses undenied connection of
human to the earth, as being related and care for creature. Labor is human
activity directed at meeting biological necessities for self-preservation and
the reproduction of the species, necessarily preserve the existence of human.
Labor is thus a cyclical, repeated process that carries with it a sense of
futility.[26] Labor activity lacks of freedom
for its attaching human to needs.
In ancient times, labor was the primary activity of the
slave class. They were not involved in the public or political environment but
in the private space of the family and served the needs of the survival of the
household. Since technology and science developed, people use a variety of
modern techniques as means to create products in order to support their
survival needs, but that activity is also a form of labor. So, If only at the
labor level, human activity is similar to that of animals; there is no real
freedom and politics. Thus, “Arendt is highly critical of
Marx's elevation of animal laborans to a position of primacy in his vision of the highest ends
of human existence”. Because for Marx, “labor (and not God) created man or that
labor (and not reason) distinguished man from the other animals”.[27] The public place, the agora,
was not a meeting place of citizens at all, but as a market one to exchange
their products.
b.
Work:
Humanity as Homo Faber
Arendt affirms that characteristic of work is that it
creates more durable environment for human than that of labor. If the product
of labor serves the private environment, artifacts from work enter the public
sphere to form the world for collective
existence of human.
Labor
and work always are
different in terms of content and concepts.[28] Work distincts with labor
because it does not bound to demand of animal;
instead it is in the realm of rationality, with and end and intention,
so work bear with some kind of freedom;
work create the public sphere for dialogue and union of human. However,
the distinction between labor and work is often forgotten in the modern world.[29] The world created by work has been
harmed by
what Arendt calls "the rise of the social”. The world
of labor and consumption dominates the public sphere, and makes people unable
to reach higher ends. Values such as sustainability and stability are replaced
by productivity and abundance. This makes the world more and more distant from
the conditions that promote the common world of man, this is what Arendt refers to
as "world alienation".
However,
the world that work create is just the premise for the existence
of the political community,
it is not for the real politics. For Arendt, work is still subject to a certain
kind of necessity, that which arises from its essentially instrumental character. As technê and poiesis the act is dictated by and
subordinated to ends and goals outside itself; so cannot be fully free.[30]
c.
Action:
Humanity as Zoon Politikon
Action
is understood as the act of speech in the public sphere. In ancient times,
there is public space in which human come to meet and have dialogue with other.
Action is the highest kind of human activities, is the truest way expressing or
disclosure oneself, to be human beings fully. Action differ from work in the
point that, by action, men disclosure his self directly through speech. Action
express the inner human freedom. Here we can see the decisive influence of
Augustine upon Arendt's thought, defining action as freedom, and freedom as
action. Men are
free...as long as they act, for to be
free means to act.
Action, in
the “polis as
standing for the space of appearance, is the way that man exist not
merely like other living but as an appearance explicitly. That public space is
not the city-state in its physical location, rather wherever individuals gather
together politically in the manner of speech and action.[31] Hence, individuals can realize
their humanity and experience the meaningfulness of life. Definitely, Arendt
assimilates this type of activity is the true way of existing as political
beings; that is why she call human as ‘zoon politikon’.
With these distinctive notions in analyzing the Vita
Activa above, Arendt wants to reconstruct the phenomena of human as a being of
action, from which she built her political ideology.
2.
Action
- Politics (Plurality, Natality, Promise-Keeping, Forgiveness)
Reconstructing
into the ancient times, Arendt emphasized the action as mode for the fully
developed existing of human beings. By which she clarifies her concept of
politics, which is expressed through some her basic concepts such as plurality,
equality, distinction, natality, promise-keeping, forgiveness.
a.
Plurality:
Equality, Distinction
Following
Heidegger, Arendt see human as dasein, as ‘being-with’, human live without
separating with others. She traced to the original meaning of the word ‘to
live’ (vivere), it means ‘to be present with other’ (inter homines esse).[32] There is a plurality that she
defines as “the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the
world, 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”.[33]
Human beings appear to each other,
not indeed as physical objects, but qua men. This appearance, as
distinguished from mere bodily existence, but as human. Men can very well live
without laboring and working, but a life without speech and without action, on
the other hand is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life
because it is no longer lived among men.[34]
Arendt
affirm that human freedom is expressed and human knowledge be gotten not only
by contemplative but also by action. The real politics must be one that support
the plurality. Every ones equally coming express themselves as distinctive
beings by action and speech.[35] One can
only see the uniqueness of one person when he can freely perform his action and
speech. Moreover,
one’s action cannot be justified for their own sake, but only by public
recognition and the shared rules of a political community, so that he cannot
fall into decisionism or autonomy. For Arendt, the politics is just a fiction
unless it has a public space in order that humans can present to see and give
meaning to, understand and recognize the uniqueness of each other.
b.
Natality
If Heidegger says human as
“being-in-the world”, going on the way forwarding the death, Arendt on the
contrary emphasizes the natality of each one. When being born
into the world, each one contribute to build the world and realize themselves
by their active life. More clearly, by natality,
Arendt means the capacity to begin, to start something new, to do the
unexpected and unanticipated and unpredictable. Human beings come into the
world as a new beginning. So, action as the realization of freedom is therefore
rooted in natality, not as something
certainties. For Arendt, the beginning that each of us represents by virtue
of being born is actualized every time we act, that is, every time we begin
something new, every time we act and speech.[36] And those new beginning create
a true man, as what saint Augustine says and Arendt recite in her book: “that a
beginning made man was created".[37] Thus, for Arendt, the real
politics must be one that has space in which every one, by act and speech, can
bring the new things into his life and the world, so that he become more as
human beings.
c.
Promise-Keeping,
Forgiveness
Because
the consequence of action can neither be controlled nor be reversed,
unpredictability and irreversibility, and human cannot withdrawal from the
sphere of interaction with others, So for Arendt, human need to rely on two
faculties inherent in action itself, the faculty of forgiving and the faculty of promising, which are connected to temporality: look back
into the past and look forward into the future.
“Without
being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our
capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we
could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever.”
On the other hand, “without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we
would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander
helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart”.[38]
In
short, the authentic politics is rooted in human nature as a political
existence, which support the conditions in which human have freedom of action,
public disclosure, so that they can human truly. Everyone are active
citizenship, realize their powers of agency in the world. So, she critique
those kinds of thought that reverse the hierarchy of human activities so that human
miss their real political aspect of his live. Further, for Arendt, the role of the political
theorist is not to lay down the laws and provide a framework for political
action but to judge the significance of political events in daily life for the
world he shares with others.
Conclusion
Arendt's concept of politics is widely supported, and also be criticized
for her rigid distinction between
the "private" and "public", between "political"
"social”. There still have someone concerning that whether her politics is
as conservatism, liberalism, and socialism or not. Moreover, Arendt’s critique
toward her temporary industrialization and technologization will not so much
fit to our times. For, there is still so much thing from that contributes to
the public sphere. And even whether her concept of social is true or not is
what others care for. Likewise, how she deal with the
socialization and specialization necessary occurring in history.[39] There are still many question
fot her but because of this paper’ limitation, those questions are not dealt
with.
In my
reflection, Vietnam temporary politics is near to what Arendt call the
anti-politics. Almost Vietnamese today do not concern with something related to
our country politics. There is still few ones caring for and trying to do
something for their country. However, under really strict controlling from
government (communist party), people can do some little things, and especially
they will easily get punishment, prison, being confined. Almost Vietnamese no
longer have genuine desire for action and speech, rather they desire for
conformity, satisfying their lives.
Actually, Arendt gives me hint to
understand our country political situation, and inspires in me something leading
to the real politics which is really built upon and for human. Living for this
politics, human should live actively. We may have an openness to discourse, a
willingness to cooperate, and care for the common. We practice reflecting skill
so that we do not only know what but how and why we obey any rules. We do this
just by starting and doing something little new from daily life.
Biography
Arendt,
Hannah. The Human Condition, 2nd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998.
Arendt,
Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1951. Third edition with new prefaces, 1976.
Entreves and Passerin, Maurizio.
"Hannah Arendt". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Accessed by 12/12/2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/arendt/.
Yar,
Majid. "Hannah Arendt". Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed by 12/12/2017. http://www.iep.utm.edu/arendt/.
[1] Majid Yar, "Hannah
Arendt", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed by 12/12/2017, http://www.iep.utm.edu/arendt/.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition,
2nd, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1998, 32. 38.
[4] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 28.
[5] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 33.
[6] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 29.
[7] In this point, Arendt also
critique Marx by his hypothesis of a natural "harmony of interests".
This is a communistic fiction.
[8] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 39-40.
[9] Entreves and Maurizio
Passerin, "Hannah Arendt", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
accessed by 12/12/2017,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/arendt/.
[10] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 38.
[11] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 46.
[12] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 46. 126.
[13] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 40.
[14] Hannah
Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976, 351.
[15] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 352.
[16] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 341.
[17] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 344.
[18] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 465.
[19] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 433.
[20] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 309.
[21] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 438.
[22] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 475.
[23] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 250-251.
[24] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 21.
[25] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 290.
[26] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 100.
[27] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 86. 130.
[28] Hannah Arendt, The Human
Condition, 80.
[29] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 85.
[30] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 212.
[31] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition,
198–199.
[32] Hannah Arendt, The Human
Condition, 7-8.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 176.
[35] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 175.
[36] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 9.
[37] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, 479.
[38] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 237. 236-247.
[39] Majid Yar, "Hannah
Arendt", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed by 12/12/2017, http://www.iep.utm.edu/arendt/.
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