Hannah Arendt was a 20th century political philosopher known for her works on totalitarianism and the human condition. She criticized representative democracy and stressed civic engagement and political deliberation. Her conception of politics emphasized active citizenship, civic engagement, and collective deliberation. She viewed action as establishing communicative relations based on equality and solidarity. Arendt analyzed human activities through the categories of labor, work, and action, with action being central to realizing freedom and individuality.

1. Hannah Arendt
Teaching Document
Source: The Political Philosophy of
Hannah Arendt by Maurizio Passerin
d'Entrèves

2. Photo1
Part-1
Thinker of the 20th
century
Works: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, On Revolution, The Life of the
Mind
Difficult to classify which political tradition like conservatism, liberalism, socialism...
Hannah Arendt
Critique of representative democracy
Stressed on civic engagement and political deliberation
Separated morality from politics
Praise for revolutionary tradition
Defender of constitutionalism & Rule of Law
Advocate of fundamental human rights [Right to life, liberty, expression, action,
opinion]
Critic of all forms of political community based on traditional ties and customs,
religious, ethnic or racial identity
Did not conceive politics for individual preferences or transcendent conception of
the good
Conceived politics as active citizenship, civic engagement, collective deliberation-
Civic Republicanism like Aristotle, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Tocqueville...it
enables citizen to exercise power, develop capacities for judgement, concerted action and
political efficacy
Her contribution to participatory democracy based on the principles of freedom, plurality,
equality & solidarity.

3. Things to know:
1. The Vita Activa and the Vita Contemplativa2
2. World alienation (16th
to 19th
Century):
The world is an artificial environment...in contradistinction to nature
The world provides -permanence, stability, durability - a touchstone of reality, since it is
lived in common with others
This world is lost because of modernity...
World alienation is the 1st
stage of modernity
Causes/Reasons:
It might be well defined as self alienation
Such a situation is conducive to mass manipulation & totalitarian indoctrination
3. Earth alienation (20th
Century)
It is the 2nd
stage of modernity
Intensification of the trends identified with world alienation
The rise of Cartesian doubt to quantum mechanics...
Discoveries & conquest of space
In this condition, we might reach a point where we shall no longer be able to
recognise ourselves in our creations
1. Expropriation-uprooting people from their
land & transformation into a class of wage
laborers
2. Wealth accumulation

4. 4. The rise of the social
Private governed by necessity
Public governed by freedom
In this Society...living together allows for forms of despotic rule...monarchical
absolutism/ totalitarianism/rule by nobody i.e. bureaucracy in Western democracy
5. Animal laborans
Animal laborans or labouring animal, according to Arendt, is always caught up in the
realm of necessity never realising freedom. Animal laborans does is not creative labour whereas
what homo faber does is creative labour.3
6. Banality of Evil - did evil without being evil - “Evil comes from a failure to think. It
defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises
and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the
banality of evil” (Arendt, 1963).
Part -2
Conception of Modernity
Modernity is the age of
-Mass society
-The past no longer carries any certainty of evaluation
Negative appraisal of Modernity...This is because of (TIB of)
Her experience with totalitarianism (Stalinism & Nazism)
Elimination of public sphere of action and speech in favour of private
world of introspection and the private pursuit of economic
interests...victory of animal laborans over both contemplation and
action
Public Private
Public Private
Social

5. Attempted to re-establish the link with the past...through 2 hermeneutic strategies...
The past to illuminate our situation
Arendt’s conception of modernity also include World alienation, Earth alienation, The
rise of the social, and the victory of Animal laborans
Part-3
Theory of Action
Arendt revived the ancient notion of praxis and this represents her most original attempt to
respond to the aporias (an irresolvable internal contradiction) of the modern age
Arendt analyses the vita active via three categories which correspond to the three fundamental
activities of our being in the world. All 3 necessary, however Action is having central place...
For Arendt, freedom means the capacity to start something new, to do the
unexpected...connecting with revolution...they represent the attempt to found a new political
space, a space where freedom can appear as a worldly reality. Here, Arendt conceives action of
individuals able to disclose their unique identities...WHO
Arendt viewing action as a mode of human togetherness based on equality and solidarity. Here,
Arendt conceives action as establishment of communicative relations
Arendt highlights the fact that by acting we preserve the world of human affairs from the
corruption and decay it would be subject to were it left to the automatism of natural processes.
PAST
from Benjamin -
Fragmentary
Histriography
from
Heidegger -
Deconstructive
Reading
Labour-To
sustain
biological needs
Tied to the human
condition of life
Work - for
human use and
enjoyment
Tied to the condition
of worldliness
Action - to
realise freedom
& individuality
Tied to the condition
of plurality (equality
& distinction)

6. For Arendt, action do not speak louder than words: action require speech, that is, words which
will disclose the aims and intentions of the actor
Arendt & Power
The capacity to act in concert for a public-political purpose is what Arendt calls
power. Power needs to be distinguished from strength, force and violence. For Arendt power is
a sui generis phenomenon and it is a product of action and rests entirely on persuasion.
1. Power to forgive & 2. The power of promise
The consequences of each act are not only unpredictable but also irreversible; the remedy
Western thought proposed is abstaining from action. Arendt, by contrast, not to turn one’s
back...but to rely on two... Power to forgive mitigates the irreversibility of the action by
absolving the actor from unintended consequences of his/her deeds; the power of promise
allows us to face the future and to set some bounds to its unpredictability
Part-4
Theory of Judgement
World alienation+ Earth alienation, these two undermined the
-possibility of forming stable identities
-establishing the adequate sense of reality
-endowing our existence with meaning
The rise of the social + the victory of Animal laborans eroded the opportunities for
-Engaging in spontaneous action with others
-Creating free public spaces of interaction and discourse
In this background, capacity for Judgement
Arendt characterised faculty of judgement as the most political of our cognitive faculties
Arendt’s interest in judgement stemmed from...the phenomenon of
totalitarianism...Eichmann trial...banality of evil
Judgement related to Vita Contemplativa and the Vita Activa4
For Arendt, the enormity and unprecedentedness of totalitarianism have not destroyed,
strictly speaking, our ability to judge; rather, they have destroyed our accepted standards of
judgment and our conventional categories of interpretation and assessment, be they moral or

7. political. And in this situation, the only recourse is to appeal to the imagination, which allows
us to view things in their proper perspective and to judge them without the benefit of a pre-
given rule or universal. For Arendt, the imagination enables us to create the distance which is
necessary for an impartial judgment.
For Arendt the validity of political judgment depends on our ability to think
“representatively,” that is, from the standpoint of everyone else, so that we are able to look at
the world from a number of different perspectives. And this ability, in turn, can only be
acquired and tested in a public forum where individuals have the opportunity to exchange their
opinions on particular matters and see whether they accord with the opinions of others (enlarged
mentality). In this respect the process of opinion formation is never a solitary activity;
Part-5
Conception of Citizenship
Arendt’s conception of Citizenship is around
-Public sphere
-Political agency & collective identity
-Political culture
I. Public Sphere
Both dimensions, SPACE OF APPEARANCE & COMMON WORLD, are
essential to the practice of citizenship, the former providing the spaces
SPACE OF APPEARANCE
- a space of political
freedom and equality
which comes into being
whenever citizens act in
concert through the
medium of speech and
persuasion.
COMMON WORLD -
a shared and public
world of human
artifacts, institutions
and settings which
separates us from
nature and which
provides a relatively
permanent and durable
context for our
activities.

8. where it can flourish, the latter providing the stable background from which
public spaces of action and deliberation can arise.
Arendt always stressed the artificiality of public life and of political activities in general,
the fact that they are man-made and constructed rather than natural or given.
Arendt emphasized that the principle of political equality does not rest on a theory of
natural rights, individuals acquire upon entering the public realm and which can be
secured only by democratic political institutions.
For Arendt political participation was important because it permitted the establishment of
relations of civility and solidarity among citizens.
For Arendt, individuals must be able to see and talk to one another in public, to meet in a
public-political space, so that their differences as well as their commonalities can emerge
and become the subject of democratic debate.
Arendt’s participatory conception of citizenship is particularly relevant in the context of
the establishment of collective identities. Once citizenship is viewed as the process of
active deliberation about competing identities, its value resides in the possibility of
establishing forms of collective identity that can be acknowledged, tested, and
transformed in a discursive and democratic fashion.
In Arendt’s view only the sharing of power that comes from civic engagement and
common deliberation can provide each citizen with a sense of effective political agency.
Arendt proposed a federated system of councils through which citizens could effectively
determine their own political affairs.
Creation of public space- collective deliberation-participatory conception of citizenship-
sophisticated political discourse-capacity for judgements-valid opinions
Arendt: Political Immoralist?1
Arendt was not insensitive to moral considerations. She made explicit her commitment to moral principles. However,
she was opposed to the introduction of absolute morality into politics. The reason for this, absolute morality was
essentially private and bound to be distorted or to become destructive when introduced into the public realm. The
absolute moral principles like goodness, love, pity and compassion were unsuited for a political realm characterised by
relations of equality. Moreover, with respect to the morality of conscience, she believed that it was too subjective in
character, more concerned with self-reproach than with injustice and only effective in emergencies. To each of the
moral absolutes she opposed political principles: in place of goodness she advocated virtue, in place of love respect, in
place of compassion and pity solidarity, in place of conscience active citizenship.
1
The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt by Maurizio Passerin d'Entrèves

9. Arendt did not believe that politics should be guided by moral absolutes and in her view, the search for absolute
goodness in politics often ended in absolute evil. For her, politics should be guided by ordinary moral considerations
such as respect for others, responsibility for self, reciprocity and mutuality, as well as fairness and solidarity. Therefore,
it follows that, for Arendt the morality appropriate to politics must be grounded in public criteria and finds expression
not in private sentiments, but in the exercise of our ordinary moral capacities for promising, forgiving, judging and
thinking.
Criticism:
1. Arendt oscillated between 2 contrasting positions of modern age: 1. Bringing close the
nature - labour 2. The dominance of technê- artificiality of our condition
2. By insisting on a strict separation between the social (private) and the political (public)
Arendt was therefore unable to give justice the central place it ought to occupy in any political
theory
3. M. Jay & G. Kateb are concerned with the apparent lack of a normative or moral dimension
in Arendt’s theory of action
4. M. Canovan, B. Parekh and P.Fuss are more concerned with the political feasibility of her
theory and argue that it contains a tension between 2 different visions of politics, an elitist and a
democratic one...Arendt was not able to resolve the tension
5. In her theory of judgement, Arendt appealed to Kant’s aesthetics (too formal & abstract)
rather to Aristotle’s notion of practical reason.
6. Arendt was not able to resolve the tension between the two conceptions of the public sphere
(Display of excellence-expressive model; people act together in concert-communicative model)

10. Further Reading:
1
https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1400024
2
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-05747-4_5
3
http://www.isec.ac.in/WP%20403%20-%20V%20Anil%20Kumar_5%20-%20Final.pdf
4
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/arendt/