The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt (Anthem Companions to Sociology, 1) 1783081856, 9781783081851

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The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt

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ANTHEM COMPANIONS TO SOCIOLOGY Anthem Companions to Sociology offer authoritative and comprehensive assessments of major figures in the development of sociology from the past two centuries. Covering the major advancements in sociological thought, these companions offer critical evaluations of key figures in the American and European sociological traditions and will provide students and scholars with an in-depth assessment of the makers of sociology and chart their relevance to modern society. Series Editor Bryan S. Turner—City University of New York, USA; Australian Catholic University, Australia; and University of Potsdam, Germany Forthcoming titles in this series include: The Anthem Companion to Auguste Comte The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim The Anthem Companion to Robert Park The Anthem Companion to Phillip Rieff The Anthem Companion to Gabriel Tarde The Anthem Companion to Ernst Troeltsch The Anthem Companion to Thorstein Veblen

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The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt Edited by Peter Baehr and Philip Walsh

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Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.anthempress.com This edition first published in UK and USA 2017 by ANTHEM PRESS 75–​76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA © 2017 Peter Baehr and Philip Walsh editorial matter and selection; individual chapters © individual contributors The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Baehr, Peter, editor. | Walsh, Philip, 1965– editor. Title: The Anthem companion to Hannah Arendt / edited by Peter Baehr, Philip Walsh. Other titles: Companion to Hannah Arendt Description: London, UK; New York, NY: Anthem Press, 2017. | Series: Anthem companions to sociology; 1 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016050044 | ISBN 9781783081851 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Arendt, Hannah, 1906–1975. | Political science – History – 20th century. | Sociology – History – 20th century. | Political sociology – History – 20th century. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General. Classification: LCC JC251.A74 A824 2017 | DDC 320.5–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050044 ISBN-​13: 978-1-78308-185-1 (Hbk) ISBN-​10: 1-78308-185-6 (Hbk) This title is also available as an e-​book.

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To David Kettler, friend and scholar of distinction, we affectionately dedicate this book.

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CONTENTS

Editors’ Introduction: Arendt’s Critique of the Social Sciences Peter Baehr and Philip Walsh

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Part I. BOOKS Chapter 1. Arendt and Totalitarianism Charles Turner

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Chapter 2. The Human Condition and the Theory of Action John Levi Martin

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Chapter 3. Eichmann in Jerusalem: Heuristic Myth and Social Science Judith Adler Chapter 4. “The Perplexities of Beginning”: Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Revolution Daniel Gordon Chapter 5. The Life of the Mind of Hannah Arendt Liah Greenfeld Part II.

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SELECTED THEMES

Chapter 6. Hannah Arendt on Thinking, Personhood and Meaning Philip Walsh

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Chapter 7. Explaining Genocide: Hannah Arendt and the Social-​Scientific Concept of Dehumanization Johannes Lang

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Chapter 8. Arendt on Power and Violence Guido Parietti

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Chapter 9. The Theory of Totalitarian Leadership Peter Baehr

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References

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Notes on Contributors

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Index

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EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION: ARENDT’S CRITIQUE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Peter Baehr and Philip Walsh

Hannah Arendt (1906–​1975) was a determined foe of the social sciences. She lambasted their methods and derided their objectives. Sociology was a particular target of her ire. Yet here she is: the subject of a book that appears in the Anthem Companions to Sociology series. The irony could not be plainer. What accounts for it? Arendt’s presence in the Anthem series is neither a lofty correction of a disciplinary embarrassment –​the paucity of “classic” female theorists –​nor a cynical marketing ploy. Today, a growing number of sociologists are claiming Arendt for sociology, just as many in the past claimed Marx for it. It is not just that her investigations into the nature of science, work, agency, power, revolution and human society itself afford new perspectives from which sociologists can directly benefit. It is something more basic still. Arendt challenges us to rethink what we are doing. She nudges us to refine, revise or abandon some of our most basic intellectual reflexes. It is startling to recall that, only 20 years ago, Arendt was still an esoteric author in most of the humanities and almost totally unread in the social sciences. Even within political theory and philosophy, disciplines to which she has an evident affiliation, Arendt was a marginal figure. Yet over the past two decades, her standing has steadily advanced from the fringe of intellectual discussion toward its centre. A host of factors explains this dynamic: the rehabilitation of totalitarianism as a vital political concept following years in the doldrums of Cold War polemics; the advent of genocidal campaigns in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East and, with them, new forms of ideology and terror; the implosion of nations and the tragic reappearance of stateless peoples; the growth of human rights discourses and human rights organizations; renewed disquiet over the reach of the state and its encroachments on privacy; the recovery of classical republicanism as a political alternative to liberalism

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and socialism. All these developments evoke Arendtian concerns and arguments. Furthermore, the greater porousness between and among the humanities and social sciences in recent years, as a result of the impetus towards transdisciplinary studies, has encouraged academics to move across intellectual borders. Arendt, a wide-​ranging thinker with much to say about politics, society, history, aesthetics, philosophy and education, is a natural beneficiary of this process.

The Purpose and Distinctiveness of This Book The addition, then, of a volume on Hannah Arendt to the Anthem Companion series is timely. Extant compendia on Hannah Arendt’s work divide, roughly, into three categories. Some collections place Arendt squarely in the traditions of philosophy and political theory. Others approach her from the standpoints of literary and cultural studies. Still others read Arendt through the lenses of law and history. The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt is different from previous edited volumes. Its purpose is to connect her writing to fundamental sociological problems. Composed principally with the higher-​level undergraduate student and graduate student in mind, it is sufficiently demanding to engage established scholars, as well as other readers already conversant with Arendt’s work. Part I elucidates her most important books, following chronologically their genesis of publication: The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), On Revolution (1963) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), together with the posthumously published The Life of the Mind (1978). Part II examines themes –​ personhood, power, leadership and genocide –​that enable sociologists to think more deeply about these topics. Naturally, the boundary separating Parts I and II is permeable. Contributors to Part I invoke a range of Arendtian texts, even as they focus on one of them, while the authors of Part II dilate on some works more than others. It is redundant in this Introduction to summarize these contributions; the authors, lucid and learned, are their own best expositors. Instead, we think it more productive to identify Arendt’s divergence from and challenges to the social sciences. This sets the scene for the chapters that follow. All of them describe in detail one or more of Arendt’s arguments. All of them assess the cogency of her analysis and its use to sociological enquiry. Before addressing Arendt’s relevance for the social sciences, however, it is worth considering her biographical background.

A Biographical Sketch That Hannah Arendt survived to become a notable theorist is itself a small miracle. She was born in Hannover, Germany, on October 14, 1906, the only

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child of secular Jewish, middle-​class parents. Her father died when she was seven, leaving Martha (née Cohn) Arendt to raise her daughter in Königsberg where the family had moved in 1909. From an early age, Hannah Arendt was encouraged by her mother to avoid any sign of a victim mentality; if taunted by children’s anti-​Semitic remarks (not that these were common), the young girl was supposed to stick up for herself, an expectation that seeded the moral and intellectual toughness with which she comported herself through life. Arendt’s mother was not political, and even the storms of the Great War little affected the town of Königsberg. Arendt, too, initially showed little interest in political questions. Her intellectual passion cleaved to the great literatures of Europe, to philosophy and to the classical authors of Greece and Rome whose ancient languages she learned as a student of the Gymnasium, the top academic tier of German secondary schools. University education followed. In Marburg, she met, studied and fell in love with Martin Heidegger, the titan of Existenz philosophy. His intellectual influence on her would prove indelible but abrasive. Heidegger was, to her mind, the greatest philosopher since Kant. But his later embrace of National Socialism was for her an exemplary lesson of what goes wrong when philosophers impose their visions of Being or Truth or Rationality or Goodness onto the necessarily inconclusive and discordant nature of politics. When the love affair between professor and student disintegrated in 1926, Arendt continued her studies in Heidelberg under the very different mentorship of Karl Jaspers, who supervised her doctoral dissertation on The Concept of Love in the Work of St. Augustine. Cumulatively, these academic experiences of the 1920s  –​which encompassed a term attending the lectures of Edmund Husserl at the University of Freiburg –​equipped Arendt with a formidable philosophical training. But harsh political realities soon overtook such transports of the mind. The Weimar period (1919–​1933) was a cultural laboratory of remarkable artistic and scientific experimentation; few intervals have witnessed such creative effervescence. It was also the site of violent street combat, as communist and National Socialist paramilitaries –​allies in enmity –​vied to overthrow the Republic. Now living in Berlin and, since 1929, married to her first husband, fellow philosophy student Günther Stern, Arendt was confronted with a maelstrom for which philosophy had no plausible remedy. Anti-​Jewish propaganda, in particular, raised pressing questions about the fate of a people to whom Arendt had, to that point, felt little visceral connection. One robust answer was the Zionist movement as enunciated by its chief German spokesman and intellectual, Kurt Blumenfeld. A Jewish homeland, Arendt reasoned, was required to protect Jews against the violent vicissitudes of anti-​Semitism in Europe and, more urgently, National Socialism in Germany. Adolf Hitler’s elevation to chancellor in January

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1933 only deepened this conviction. Tasked by Blumenfeld’s German Zionist Organization to collect anti-​Semitic tracts in the Prussian State Library, Arendt was apprehended by the Gestapo. That might have been the last time anyone heard of her if Arendt’s interrogator had not succumbed to the young woman’s wiles and intelligence. Charming her way out of custody eight days after being arrested, she resolved to flee Germany. So began a refugee’s odyssey, taking Arendt to Prague, Geneva, and thence to Paris, where she reunited with Stern and resumed her Zionist activities, at one point accompanying a group of young Jewish immigrants to their new homeland in Palestine. And it was in Paris that Arendt met Heinrich Blücher, whom she married soon after her relationship with Stern dissolved. On the face of it, Blücher –​a burly, working-​class, ex-​Marxist with no formal higher education –​was an unlikely match for an erudite young woman of Arendt’s background. Yet he had exactly the grit she needed and, when they first met, possessed far more political experience than she did. A  philosophical autodidact, he was hard-​nosed and intellectually irreverent. In later years, when Arendt was attacked for her controversial views –​over the Eichmann trial in particular –​Blücher offered solidarity and counsel. Arendt’s Paris sojourn abruptly ended with Germany’s invasion of France in the summer of 1940. She was briefly interned as an enemy alien before fleeing once more, this time immigrating to the United States with Blücher in 1941. (Her mother followed.) Life had almost to begin again. The couple knew no English when they arrived in New York, but Arendt, unlike her husband, quickly learned the language, functionally at first, more proficiently over time, always larded with the thickest German accent. During the war, Arendt combined journalism for the émigré paper Aufbau (Construction), a medium for German-​speaking Jews, with research for the Commission on European Jewish Reconstruction. The early 1940s were also the time when news of the death camps first reached America; horror rapidly replaced incredulousness as the scale of the catastrophe, and the means employed to achieve it, came to be known. The impact on Arendt was enormous; henceforth, explaining Europe’s descent into industrialized extermination became the core of her life’s work. Its first offspring, consolidating a series of preparatory articles on the subject, was The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in the same year  –​ 1951 –​that she received American citizenship. This double triumph was auspicious. Origins established Arendt as the premier thinker on its topic and an iconoclastic voice in the American intellectual conversation. It was the first of a stream of books that stimulated, disturbed, shocked and sometimes offended her contemporaries. Many readers of this Companion are career academics; Arendt was one only fitfully. As her fame grew in the 1950s, she delivered lecture courses at

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Princeton, Cornell, Berkeley and Chicago before becoming a recurrent visiting professor on the Committee of Social Thought at the University of Chicago (1963–​1967) and only then taking up a full-​time position at the New School for Social Research in New York (1967–​1975). By many accounts, she was an inspirational and demanding professor; her current literary executor, Jerome Kohn, was one of Arendt’s graduate students. Yet it bears emphasis that for much of her life Arendt avoided the university mill and, in situ, never fully adjusted to it. In that regard she resembles fellow independents like Thomas Mann, Arthur Koestler, W. H. Auden, Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy; the list is much longer and some of its number  –​such as James Baldwin, Rebecca West and George Orwell –​were not even college educated. Rather than write for the elite journals of political science and philosophy, or position herself conspicuously among their professional associations, Arendt oriented her work to a larger audience of intelligent readers. These could best be reached in newspapers and magazines such as Commentary, Confluence, Dissent, Partisan Review, The New York Times, The Listener, and especially the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. If Arendt donned, erratically and belatedly, the role of a university teacher, she had far more in common with the pugilistic milieu of free, spirited intellectuals than with the discursively cleansed, offense-​free environs of the modern academy. Nevertheless, her books –​dense, scholarly monographs prodigiously laced with philosophical and literary references –​are perhaps best broached in the context of a university seminar, and the current volume is designed to enable this kind of engagement.

Hannah Arendt’s Appraisal of the Social Sciences Arendt’s attitude to the social sciences seems, at first glance, to be all of a piece:  they are intellectually bankrupt, “debunking” exercises in reductionism, that drastically simplify and thereby dehumanize their subjects. On closer examination, however, her objections to the social sciences, her lines of attack and the virulence of her attitude show significant variation over the course of her career. Her appraisal spans five related areas and periods: 1) Arendt’s early criticism of Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia (1929) defends philosophy against the supposed encroachments of sociology. 2) Her post-​war work on totalitarianism challenges the basic categories of understanding that social scientists bring to their studies. 3) The ontology of human activity provided in The Human Condition (1958) offers a critical account of the “social viewpoint.” 4)  Her perspective on the meaning of politics, which runs through almost all of her work, leads her to sharp disagreements with how social scientists study political affairs. 5) The sociological ambition to uncover laws of human action is the subject of Arendt’s disapproval in several essays written in the

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mid-​1960s. We here outline both the substance and the virtue of Arendt’s views on the social sciences in each of these areas. The critique of Karl Mannheim In 1930, Arendt published a critical review of Mannheim’s ([1929] 1936) Ideology and Utopia, a work that in its time attracted intense scrutiny in Germany and –​when it was translated in 1936 –​the United States as well. In the review, titled “Philosophy and Sociology,” Arendt defends the Existenz philosophy of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger, and attacks Mannheim’s sociology on the grounds of its failure to grasp the kinds of “fundamental” human experiences in which existentialist thinking is rooted. This line of attack to some extent anticipates her later criticisms of sociology, which all draw attention to sociology’s failure to take account of the complexity of human phenomena. Ideology and Utopia is primarily concerned to establish a new foundation for the sociology of knowledge by extending and reconfiguring Marx’s account of “ideology.” But Mannheim also travels much further afield, addressing such issues as the possibility of a rationalized (or “scientific”) politics, the functions of utopian and ideological thought in the historical process and the role of philosophy in understanding human affairs. For Mannheim, the standard under-​laboring1 model of philosophy –​which aspires to furnish a rational justification for the other sciences –​is complacent; it fails to glean its own “existential determination” ([1929] 1993, 404). Philosophy, in other words, does not and cannot stand outside struggles over the truth and value of its own claims; further, Mannheim continues, these claims are implicated in contests for power between and among differentially placed social groups. Philosophies are always –​consciously or not –​engaged in a competition to make their “public interpretation of reality” (ibid.) the accepted one, and in this respect they are, like any other discourse, “correlatives of distinct social situations” ([1929] 1936, 81). Most brazenly, Mannheim singles out Existenz philosophy as a salient culprit of this intellectual naivety. For Arendt, equipped with a newly minted doctorate in philosophy and a strong attachment to the thought of both her primary mentors, Mannheim’s book presented a powerful challenge. Her review takes him to task on several issues, including what has often been considered the Achilles heel of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge: sociological relativism (he preferred the term “relationism”), and the presumptive standpoint it adopts of a “free-​floating intellectual stratum” tasked with the responsibility of mediating antagonistic political perspectives. But Arendt’s primary concern is with Mannheim’s depiction of philosophy as subject to the same social forces, prejudices and ideological distortions that affect everyday experience and the other human sciences. This

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reductive and deflationary position, she argues, fails to distinguish between the two levels of analysis Heidegger is at pains to distinguish in Being and Time (1927):  the ontic and the ontological. This difference, she argues, is not an arbitrary one that the philosopher imposes from on high, but one congruent with the structure of human experience. In the everyday mode of “human communal life” –​expressed in the experiences of “idle talk,” the “being-​with-​ others” and the “They” –​the world has a flat, continuous, intrinsically ontic character. But, as both Heidegger and Jaspers insist, this does not exhaust the range of human experience. On the contrary, it is in the moments in which the mundane is interrupted, when human beings are thrown back upon their own selves and “recognize the uncertainty of the human situation as such” (Arendt 1994, 31), that knowledge of their own authentic being-​in-​the-​world becomes possible. This experience is precipitated, for Jaspers, by what he calls border situations, “those few moments during which alone we experience our authentic selves” (ibid.) –​moments of discernment that are potentially available to all human beings, and therefore rooted in the world, not in the philosopher’s reflected perspective. But Mannheim’s sociology –​and the perspective of sociology more generally –​is drably uniform and homogenous; it is incapable of noticing the distinctive and diverse modes of human experience, and therefore the possibility of undertaking confrontations with oneself, let alone with the ontological structure of existence. For Mannheim, there exists only the ontic, or what he calls the “concretely operating order of life” ([1929] 1936, 193). All experiences –​including those that involve fundamental truths or core values –​are to be explained in terms of societal pressures and social positioning. This means, as Arendt points out –​and generalizing the point to include the discipline as a whole –​that “sociology is in search of a reality that is more original than the mind itself, and all the intellectual products are to be interpreted or destructured in that light. Destructuring does not mean destruction, but, rather, a tracing back of any claim to validity to the specific situation from which it arises” (1994, 33). While references to the ontological difference vanish from Arendt’s later writings (as they do from Heidegger’s), the objections to Mannheim’s sociological perspective that derive from the commitment to such a difference persist, and indeed pervade her other criticisms of the social sciences discussed later. Mannheim’s refusal to grant the basic datum of phenomenology –​that experience consists of a complex, differentiated structure that must be construed in its own terms –​is emblematic of sociology’s monochrome vision: namely, a perspective that refers all significant things to an extraneous social origin and consistently favours subsuming judgments. These are judgments that are indifferent to the specific, particular and sometimes unique character of human phenomena.

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The originality of totalitarianism When Arendt wrote her review of Ideology and Utopia, the Weimar Republic was still intact. She was still a citizen of Germany. The Nazis had not yet seized the state and launched what would become a global war. In contrast, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) was composed in the utterly different circumstances of the post-​war world. Her criticisms of sociology witness a corresponding shift in emphasis. Whereas, earlier, she was on the defensive, speaking up for philosophy against a parvenu social science, now she was attacking sociology and other social sciences for misunderstanding the most important episode of modern times. The main charge Arendt levels at the social sciences in The Origins of Totalitarianism and, even more, in related writings, is that they fail utterly to grasp that totalitarianism is an unprecedented social and political order ([1950] 1994, 233; [1951] 1973, 461). A regime type common to National Socialism and Bolshevism, especially in its Stalinist phase, totalitarianism “differs essentially from other forms of political oppression.” It generates “entirely new political institutions” ([1951] 1973, 460) and these “operate according to a system of values so radically different from all others, that none of our traditional legal, moral or common sense utilitarian categories [can] any longer help us to come to terms with, or judge or predict their course of action” (ibid.). On one level, Arendt’s claims about the novelty of totalitarianism are clearly overstated. Totalitarian regimes contain many features shared with dictatorships, notably a monopolistic party system. The assault on the rule of law, the demand for ideological conformity and even concentration camps are not totalitarian innovations. But this misses Arendt’s point. Totalitarianism is novel not only because of its peculiar configuration of terror and ideology, or because it is a kind of government that incubates a movement rather than taming it, but because its existence gives rise to actions that defy the repertoire of concepts typically used to compare and classify human behaviour. Death camps have no utility and cannot be explained by comparing them, for instance, to slavery. The purge cycle subjects the regime to deliberate chaos. The confession of impossible crimes by totally innocent people is bizarre; so, too, is the identification and liquidation of so-​called objective enemies –​ people whose only crime is that they exist. And although sociologists such as Talcott Parsons and Raymond Aron advance important analytical arguments about totalitarianism, their intellectual reflex, Arendt claims, is largely conventional:  they depict National Socialism and Bolshevism as more extreme versions of previous regimes, their radical nature refracted through the prism of well-​worn concepts such as autocracy or anomie. Arendt took this reflex to indicate more fundamental weaknesses of the social sciences: a reliance on

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functionalist explanation, an insensitivity to key historical differences and a tendency to substitute and shuffle ideas, destroying the boundaries between them and their objects. She also developed these criticisms in other work, as we detail later. So while Arendt’s claims about the unprecedentedness of totalitarian regimes are problematic in some ways, the originality of her approach and her defiant refusal to regard totalitarianism as a permutation of something already mapped is a stimulating challenge to think anew. Even if we accept that Arendt identified fundamental weaknesses of the social sciences in the 1950s, we would still expect these to have long since been addressed, and the social sciences to be less prone to such problems today. It is therefore worth exploring the applicability of Arendt’s objections in Origins to more recent sociological frameworks for understanding political phenomena. For totalitarianism, and the powerful picture of it Arendt offered, still poses challenges to conventional social scientific understanding. Take, for example, the approach of contemporary neo-​Weberian sociologist W.  G. Runciman (2000, 64–​93), whose model of the organization of power in human societies relies on inductive generalization and trans-​historical comparison. Runciman argues that although the ancient Greek polis of the third century BC and the absolutist English monarchy of the sixteenth century AD are clearly different in many respects, both can be classified as state societies because they were both sustained by a particular configuration of power. This configuration is composed of the following ingredients: 1) a division between the ruling elite and the ruled; 2)  ruling ideologies that secure legitimacy and stability; and 3) unequal balances of the means of production, coercion and/​or persuasion between rulers and ruled (2010: 10–​11). The power structure of every society, for Runciman, can be understood relative to the degrees of control ruling elites can exercise over the means of coercion, production or persuasion. Once we define the bases on which power and its legitimation rest, we can extrapolate them to any state-​based formation. This complements Runciman’s more general approach, in which comparison and classification are the staples of naming and understanding social phenomena across long tracts of historical time. In major respects, Runciman’s model is inapplicable to totalitarian regimes. Nazism and Stalinism (and Maoism) succeeded in integrating large segments of the population, together with their secondary institutions, into the political apparatus. The ruling elite was periodically subject –​in the Soviet Union, at least –​to liquidation. The ideologies of history and nature Bolshevism and Nazism articulated were not “stabilizing factors” but rather their opposite (Arendt [1951] 1973, 463). Totalitarian ideologies transform “Nature and History from the firm soil supporting human life and action into supra-​gigantic forces whose movements race through humanity, dragging every individual willy-​nilly with them  –​either riding atop their triumphant car or crushed

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under its wheels” (1994, 341). Moreover, the Nazi assumption of power was marked not by attempts to shore up its legal status; on the contrary, the Nazis did not even bother to replace the Weimar constitution. They “showed no concern whatsoever about their own legislation. Rather, there was ‘only the constant going ahead on the road toward ever new fields’ ” ([1951] 1973, 394). It is true that totalitarian regimes monopolize control of the means of coercion, and the exercise of terror is a principal component of their rule. But the notion of “means of persuasion,” canvassed by Runciman, seems a misnomer when applied to totalitarian propaganda. Arendt devotes one of the most powerful sections of the third part of Origins (341–​364) to its analysis, not only revealing the specific techniques the Nazis and Bolsheviks employed –​including a pseudo-​scientific language, self-​fulfilling prophecies, conspiracy theories and other elements –​but also emphasizing the dissimilarity between totalitarian propaganda and any “means of persuasion” that appeals to self-​interest or utilitarian considerations. Similarly, while the economy of Nazi Germany was recognizably capitalist in the organization of its means of production, it was in other respects heteroclite and anomalous –​notably in its mixture of wage labor and slavery and in its deliberate destruction of large portions of the labor force; in these and other respects neither Nazism nor Bolshevism conformed to the class-​interest presuppositions on which the idea of control over the means of production rests. Runciman’s model may still be useful in explaining features of totalitarian rule that Arendt missed, and in establishing links and similarities between phenomena that she claimed “defied comparison” (1994, 339). Equally Zygmunt Bauman’s (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust identifies hitherto underappreciated features of totalitarian rule from a distinctly sociological perspective (for example, the “production of social distance” in the erosion of ethical concern), while also problematizing the sharp distinction between regarding the Holocaust as either “normal” or extraordinary. In so doing, he goes some way toward questioning both the argument that totalitarianism constitutes a variant of autocracy and the claim that it is unprecedented. Still, as Margaret Canovan (2000, 33)  points out, what remains striking about totalitarianism is “its strangeness:  the phenomenon [Arendt] pictures is not only terrifying but weird and senseless, much less comprehensible.” Arendt confronted the strangeness of totalitarianism with extraordinary clarity, and this remains, perhaps, the principal virtue of her account. The social viewpoint and the triad of activities Arendt challenged the social sciences on a still more fundamental level in The Human Condition ([1958] 1998). This is not immediately obvious. The book is

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heavily philosophical and, some argue, deeply Heideggerian (Villa 1999, 62). But it is also the place where she engages with problems the social sciences routinely address, such as the human meaning of work, the character of the public sphere, interaction, individualism and the origins of modern natural science, among a range of other issues. Though the book has a curious organization and looks superficially like a series of self-​standing essays, its unifying core lies in three sections titled Labor, Work and Action. Philosophical interpreters of The Human Condition tend to see it as a phenomenological work, a mapping of the human world from the standpoint of individual experience. Yet the book is also intended to account for the objective and intersubjective structures within which individual experience occurs. Accordingly, Arendt locates individual activity in a previously established human environment, or web, that limits, allows and induces human conduct. The conversation between her and Karl Mannheim appears to have resumed, except now it is only Mannheim’s ghost that can reply. When Mannheim writes, in “Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon,” that “we step at birth into a ready-​interpreted world, a world which has already been made understandable, every part of which has been given meaning” (1930, 198), he has the individualistic assumptions of Existenz philosophy in his sights. Arendt’s analysis in The Human Condition proceeds from a comparable starting point: human activity unfolds in a shared, interdependent world that preexists the individual. Yet her project also recalls the ontological difference, invoked in her review of Ideology and Utopia, for she provides a fundamental ontology (not an ontic account) of the shared human world of interaction and institutions. The Human Condition, indeed, provides an account of “society” that competes directly with sociological theories. To understand what she is doing, we must first explore the meaning of one of Arendt’s most infamous theses, the “rise of the social.” She uses this phrase in distinct, if often related senses to refer to: a) the culture of conformism pervading mass society; b) the invasion of civil society and private life by state-​organized agencies at the expense of traditional sources of solidarity; c) the “unnatural growth of the natural,” namely, the transvaluation of activities and experiences that have hitherto been considered part of the realm of labor and therefore trivial or unimportant in the larger scheme of human existence; d) the colonization of political institutions by mass media and mass marketing. Now, one could restate each of the statements sociologically. There is considerable overlap, for example, between the second of these theses and Robert Putnam’s (2000) enquiries into the decline of social capital since the 1960s; he attributes this decay partly to the displacement of local and traditional identities –​based on ethnic and religious organizations –​by the state’s appropriation of welfare and other responsibilities.

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There is another meaning of the rise of the social, however, that is directly linked to Arendt’s critique of the social sciences. This is the idea that the rise of the social includes the rise of the “social viewpoint.” She puts it this way: The social viewpoint is identical … with an interpretation that takes nothing into account but the life process of mankind, and within its frame of reference all things become objects of consumption. Within a completely “socialized mankind,” whose sole purpose would be the entertaining of the life process –​ and this is the unfortunately quite unutopian ideal that guides Marx’s theories –​ the distinction between labour and work would have completely disappeared; all work would have become labour because all things would be understood, not in their worldly, objective quality, but as results of living labour power and functions of the life process. ([1958] 1998, 88)

The propensity to understand all work simply as labor is therefore at the root of the social viewpoint, and this viewpoint is not independent of the social processes that promote it. An important part of what Arendt means by the “rise of the social” is the idea, widely shared within the social sciences, that all work can be understood as labor and all action understood as work. The significance Arendt attributes to this and other developments, in which Marxism is most obviously complicit, is clarified through her triadic understanding of the nature of human activities. Arendt argues that the categories of labor, work and action denote distinctive human forms that exhibit trans-​historical, “essential” or at least definitive qualities. But these forms are also interdependent, insofar as their meanings depend on their contrasts with each other, and together they comprise a vita activa, a mode of life that is “within the range of every human being” ([1958] 1998, 3). (The Human Condition was actually titled Vita Activa in its European editions; see Young-​Bruehl 1982, 324.) The category of labor includes those activities that are undertaken by the body, and whose function is oriented to biological needs ([1958] 1998, 80–​81). Labor is not a “project”; it has no end beyond the maintenance and reproduction of life itself. It involves production for the purpose of consumption, and is contrasted with the planned, controlled and organized activities that characterize the capacity to work (or to fabricate, as she renders it consistently in her later writings), that is, to transform objects in the world into things that fulfil human purposes. Fabrication is associated with utilitarian, means-​ends thinking, in which goals are foreseen and pathways chosen to achieving them. The third category of activity is action, which is closely related to speech and to communication more generally. Action and speech are to be distinguished from fabrication insofar as they are pursued primarily for their own sake, and not for some further

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end. And while the meaning of work is inherently tied to its outcome, and while labor is bound to the biological conditions of human life, action occurs between human beings, in the “in-​between space of human plurality.” Action takes place, in other words, in contexts and spaces in which human beings encounter each other as fellow actors (not things), endowed with freedom and the ability to think, will, speak with and recognize each other. Arendt identifies it strongly with the political realm, but Seyla Benhabib (2000, 125) points out that this is an unduly restrictive conception. We engage in action whenever the meaning of the activity plays out in the “web of relationships and enacted stories” that constitutes human plurality. Action can take place in classrooms, salons and living rooms as well as in parliaments, trade union halls and television studios.2 The triad of activities just described should not be understood to map straightforwardly onto the actual activities humans carry out. Childrearing, for example, is an activity that combines elements of labor, work and action. In addition, many practices, such as thinking or playing, do not fit the model at all. Nevertheless, the triad captures important differences between and among types of human activity that have, to some extent, trans-​historical institutional correlates. For example, slavery, indenturing, caste and wage labor are institutional arrangements intended to reserve the activity of labor for a particular group of people. Similarly, guilds grew up around the prerogatives of artisans engaged in fabrication, and a public sphere, where action and speech take place, is close to being a human universal. How does this schema of human activity differ from standard social scientific accounts? We might object, first, from a Marxist perspective, that it is based on an uncritical nostalgic idealization of human activity, far removed from an account of how it actually proceeds in contemporary industrial society. The planning and making of furniture, for example, is less likely to be the work of individual craftsmen today than it is to be the outcome of the activities of numerous individuals each engaged in routine, automated tasks that have no relationship with the product that results. But Arendt does not deny that work can be reduced to labor. Like Marx –​who used the language of alienation to describe the same developments –​she is concerned to show how this represents something like a deformation of the human condition, while rejecting Marx’s account of emancipation. For Marx situates human freedom entirely within the sphere of fabrication –​human beings are free insofar as they choose the ends and means of their work. According to Arendt, this represents a narrow conception of human freedom, bound to a Promethean vision of human beings as fundamentally tool-​users. It ignores action as a distinct mode of activity, and freedom as the experience of politics. Indeed, Marx’s thought, she believes, is ultimately anti-​political.

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Second, we might object that Arendt’s triadic schema neglects the primary element of any individual human act, which is the intention of the individual. The main contrast here is with Weber’s theory of action, although Arendt and Weber are opposed in other ways too, discussed presently. Weber’s account of action is the classical, general version of an intentionalist theory; rational action or exchange theory may be understood as more specialized iterations. These theories all give priority to the purposiveness of individual actors in explaining human conduct. Weber’s theory is more general than the others because it does not assume that all human behaviour is driven by purposive rationality, with cost-​benefit calculation of the consequences, but restricts the predominance of this phenomenon to highly rationalized (modern) cultural conditions. But, from Arendt’s perspective, intentionalist accounts of action are flawed on two counts. First, they take the category of means-​ends thinking as archetypical, while in fact this modality applies only to the realm of fabrication. Granted, people, as a matter of fact, do often attempt to treat others in an instrumental fashion (contrary to Kant’s “humanity formula” to always treat others as ends-​in-​themselves, not as mere means to ends), but, as Arendt points out, in the realm of action, this more often than not fails. As anyone who has participated in forms of democratic decision-​making knows, the outcome only rarely approximates to what has been envisioned by any particular actor or group of actors involved in the process. Similarly, it is part of the meaning (and practical ordering) of relationships based on learning, friendship, politics or love, that people do not treat each other in terms of purpositive rationality, or simply as partners to an exchange or a contract. Jürgen Habermas observes, in the Theory of Communicative Action (1989, 280–​285), that Weber’s theory of action fails to acknowledge that both strategic and communication action are irreducible. We may understand Arendt’s point as broadly similar to Habermas’s, although it is an open question whether his theory of communicative action offers a more far-​reaching or persuasive model than Arendt’s. Third, social scientists may claim against Arendt that they are the ones best placed to understand the meanings of human activity, and this is because meaning gets its sense and orientation from the institutions within which it occurs. A celebrated account of the reliance of human activity on institutions is found in Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1967). The authors argue that individuals “construct” the social world mentally (through objectification and typification) and actually via the reproduction of institutions that their activity accomplishes. On this model, the social world can be understood in terms of a dialectic of activities (agency) and institutions (structures). But neither Berger and Luckmann’s original model nor subsequent elaborations allow for the fundamentally different meanings

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that attach to human activity independently of the institutions in which they occur. The institution of a guild differs from that of a parliament not (or not only) because of the meanings people bestow on them but because these institutions are responding to fundamentally different human activities. Indeed, the common element in each of these social scientific accounts is the refusal to acknowledge the fundamentally different significance attached to each element of the triad of activities, and the consequent tendency to assume all activity resembles labor (Marx, Berger and Luckmann), or fabrication (Weber –​insofar as his account ignores the non-​instrumental modality of speech and action –​and rational action theory). A similar truncation is detectable in the vocabulary of a discipline that consistently makes use of terms drawn from architecture and construction. We can now see why Arendt ties the rise of the social to the emergence of the “social viewpoint.” Reducing the intentional, project-​based aspects of their fabricating activities to “labor” in the minds of actors conduces to the actual reduction of fabrication to labor. This is why Marx’s scientific ambition to extrapolate the labor theory of value to every single human activity (including knowledge, and the emergence of his own thought) is at odds with his early emancipatory writings that profess to seek the end of alienation and the re-​emergence of satisfying, fulfilling work. Politics and appearance Running throughout Arendt’s work is a conception of politics that is profoundly at odds with that advanced by most mainstream social science, and is central to the low esteem in which she held them. The central sociological category for understanding politics is power, and the preeminent sociologist of power is Max Weber. Arendt never advanced an explicit critique of Weber’s work, but her departures from him in The Human Condition and elsewhere are so many, and so striking, that it is worth pausing to consider them further. Let us focus on the writers’ divergence on the subjects of power and politics. All sociologists recall Max Weber’s definition of power as a type of compulsion, “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests” ([1922] 1978, 53). In contrast, for Arendt, power is something integrally collective –​as it was, in a different sense, for Talcott Parsons. “Power,” she says, “is never the property of an individual”; it “corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert” ([1951] 1973, 113). Weber’s notion of power, she implies, is tantamount to a mixture of strength and violence. As for the idea of Herrschaft –​domination or rulership that Weber invokes in his classification of traditional, rational-​legal and

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charismatic types of legitimacy –​the difference between the two thinkers is again stark. One of Weber’s great conceptual innovations was effectively to sanitize Herrschaft by redefining it as a structure of command and consent (Richter 1995, 58–​78; Baehr 2008). Weber makes this move with the compound legitime Herrschaft, a pleonasm because, on his account, all types of Herrschaft are legitimate to the extent to which they rely on voluntary obedience, no matter the grounds of that assent. Put differently, Weber offers no theory of illegitimate domination. Also pertinent is his decision to extract Herrschaft from the shifting frameworks of political and legal meaning and contestation that had informed it for centuries, and to relocate the term in another discourse entirely. That discourse is sociology, a science that in Weber’s formulation of it is supposed to be free from value judgment and hence free from the cacophony of political dispute. Arendt, however, expressly distinguishes between “justification” and “legitimacy,” just as she disputes the equation of politics with rulership, a view she traces back beyond Weber to Plato in particular ([1969] 1972, 151). And Arendt repeatedly paints Herrschaft in its darkest colours, which helps explain why Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft is the German title of The Origins of Totalitarianism. Weber and Arendt have commensurately divergent views of politics. Weber describes it as “every kind of independent leadership activity,” especially that which entails influence over the state ([1919] 1994, 319–​311). Politics is witnessed wherever men and women seek “a share of power” or strive to influence the distribution of power, both within and between states. This definition of politics largely accords with the common-​sense notion that politics is about parties, elections, protests, violence and diplomacy, and comprises regimes that span the gamut from liberal democracy to the most brutal despotism. Arendt, however, sees these phenomena as background features of politics, not as its sine qua non. Politics for her is something more elemental, a distinctive kind of human activity that expresses a unique “principle of human differentiation” which she calls plurality. An entry in her reflective diary of January 1953 states that: To establish a science of politics one needs to reconsider all philosophical statements on Man under the assumption that men, and not Man, inhabit the earth. The establishment of political science demands a philosophy for which men exist only in the plural. Its field is human plurality. Its religious source is the second creation myth –​not Adam and rib, but: Male and female created He them. (2002, 295)

While the raison d’être of commercial and domestic society is the ephemeral satisfaction of private needs and the pursuit of private happiness, politics

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“takes its place alongside culture among the death defying capacities of man” (Canovan 1994, 185). Politics is not a thing within us, an integral quality of human nature such as the sexual drive or the emotion of fear. It is rather a human spatial artifice; it comes into existence with the creation of things –​ laws, constitutions, assemblies –​which arise between us, much as a table separates and brings together those who sit around it. Politics requires institutions to fill this space, to stabilize the perennial flux of human action: action that is free both to protect the world and to destroy it. Human freedom, so construed, is neither freedom of the will, freedom of conscience, nor freedom to withdraw from the world. Human freedom, for good and for ill, reflects the basic reality that humans, unlike lions or sharks, are beings capable of initiation: breaking with automatic processes, interrupting routines and commencing a train of fresh events. Social science, she complains, takes the opposite view, assuming that “modes of behaviour” can be the “object of systematic research.” But they can only become so “if one excludes man as an active agent, the author of demonstrable events in the world, and demotes him to a creature who merely behaves differently in different situations, on whom one can conduct experiments, and who, one may even hope, can ultimately be brought under control” (Arendt 2005, 105). Modern academic disciplines such as economics and statistics are unthinkable without a heavily regulated population that evinces standard patterns of conduct. Typologies and modes of classification concerned with frequency and prediction are biased against the possibility of political action in Arendt’s sense, marginalizing it to the sidelines of asocial or abnormal conduct. Moreover, for Arendt, the public nature of politics requires a corresponding way of understanding it. Politics is a space of appearance. It is a phenomenal reality in which actors, seeking to persuade their peers, are seen and heard, and take a public stand in some common undertaking. This presupposes not simply a world of artefacts whose resilience forms the framework of action, but also a domain whose very visibility informs citizens about themselves and about each other. As she remarked, “It is the function of the public realm to throw light on the affairs of men by providing a space of appearances in which they can show in deed and word, for better and worse, who they are and what they can do” (1968, viii). Where that visibility is absent or occluded, where dark times of sheer violence or of “invisible government” prevail, politics withers. Politics is also a sphere of surprise and self-​revelation. For when people leave the protective cocoon of the family and risk public activity and leadership, when they join with others to pursue some collective project, they become aware of facts, possibilities and dangers of which they were previously innocent. They learn about themselves as well as about others.

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We said that politics, on Arendt’s account of it, is a space of appearance, a statement that is easy to misunderstand. Arendt is not invoking the familiar philosophical contrast between being and appearance, or essence and appearance. That would suggest that politics is reducible to something else rather than being an experience sui generis, elemental though by no means self-​sustaining. But politics as a distinctive theoretical object tends to evaporate wherever philosophers and social scientists describe it as an outcome of something else more causally significant than itself (as in the Marxian base-​ superstructure model, or in sociologies of politics) or claim, as modern critical realists do, that the visible, experiential realm is ultimately explicable in terms of generative causal structures. If it really is true, as the realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar asserts, that “the empirical is only a subset of the actual, which is itself a subset of the real” (1989, 190), then the most profound and consequential aspects of existence are those most remote from sight, from action and, hence, from politics as Arendt understands it, where “appearance … constitutes reality” ([1958] 1998, 50). Process, causation and explanation Arendt rejects the social scientific quest for laws governing human affairs analogous to the laws governing nature. This objection is elaborated mostly in the central essay in Between Past and Future, “The Concept of History: Past, Present and Future” (1961). Here she notes that although the methods of social science “are much cruder and less reliable” (1961, 59)  than their naturalist counterparts, their goal is broadly the same –​to predict and control human behaviour and “to treat man as an entirely natural being whose life processes can be handled the same way as all other processes” (ibid.). Arendt warns, alarmingly, that “social techniques … have only to overcome a certain time-​ lag to be able to do for the world of human relations and human affairs as much as has already been done for the world of human artefacts” (ibid., 89). The position Arendt attacks is conventionally known as the nomothetic approach. It states that, in principle, human affairs are subject to relatively invariant rules that wait for our discovery and, potentially, application. It is usually contrasted with the idiographic approach, which emphasizes the variety of human social behaviours and the uniqueness of each historical event. Almost no one, today, subscribes to a strict or literal version of the nomothetic stance. But many social scientists do assert the weaker contention that because patterns of regularity exist in social life, it falls to the social scientist to formulate them into generalizable hypotheses that can be tested empirically. This made Arendt uneasy. She foresaw a future of increasing technocratic social control over human beings, which innovations in genetic engineering

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and biotechnology seem partially to have vindicated. Yet it is also true that technology contributes to a “runaway world” (Giddens 2003) that is more unpredictable than it ever has been before. Arendt never really imagined that the social sciences would raise themselves to a level of sophistication sufficient to grasp the complexity of human action, but she was concerned that the “rise of the social” might come to simplify it to the point where it truly could be studied scientifically. Such simplification would occur to the extent that automation eradicated human skill and judgment, and cultural practices atrophied into consumerist entertainment. That would mark, she portentously speculated, the “last stage of the labouring society, a society of jobholders [which] demands of its members a sheer automatic functioning, as though the individual life had actually been submerged in the overall life process of the species” ([1958] 1998, 322). This scenario, rather like Weber’s “iron cage,” is one that appears to us over-​wrought. It is also in tension with Arendt’s category of “natality,” her observation that, with each human birth, something unique enters the world and with it a new beginning. A more telling critique of modern social science emerges from Arendt’s analysis of the concept of “process.” This term, derived from the natural sciences of the seventeenth century and now ubiquitous in historiography and its social scientific offshoots, was unknown among ancient Greek and Roman historians and historiographers. Its contemporary prevalence suggests a radically new conception of the relations between the realms of “nature” and “history.” Arendt argues that once human affairs come to be seen as processes, rather than as trains of singular events, attention shifts from the “what” to the “how” and particular things lose all value in themselves (1961, 57). Human acts are then considered meaningful only insofar as they form part of an encompassing whole, or stand as indexes of collective phenomena. Ancient Greek and Roman historiography, takes it for granted that the meaning of, or as the Romans would say, the lesson of each event, deed or occurrence is revealed in and by itself. This, to be sure, does not exclude either causality or context in which something occurs; antiquity was aware of these as we are. But causality and context were seen in a light provided by the event itself, illuminating a specific segment of human affairs; they were not envisaged as having an independent existence of which the event would be only the more or less accidental though adequate expression. (1961, 64)

Ancient Greek and Roman historiography adhered, we would now say, to an exclusively idiographic method. The acts historians picked out to record and explain were extraordinary deeds illuminated by “the ‘natural’ light

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history itself offers” (1994, 319); they were not considered derivatives of more abstract, general processes. History consisted in the technique of portraying the events of a human life within a narrative through the activity of storytelling, and a story discloses the acting and speaking agent, the “who” rather than the “what” of the events ([1958] 1998, 186). Storytelling, Arendt argued, is the most human way of understanding the past because, through a narrative, individuals are portrayed as genuine actors rather than as vectors of abstract forces and structures. True to form, Arendt admired the skill of novelists to illuminate events through the characters they depict; Herman Melville, Isak Dinesen and William Faulkner were three of her favourite writers and Arendt herself told Dinesen’s “story” in Men in Dark Times (1968), as one of a series of life-​narratives which she presents in this book. Arendt’s rejection of the idea of social processes, and her embrace of idiographic storytelling, is by no means consistent. No wonder: it is very hard to see how any student of society, politics and history could write about their topic without invoking a process of some sort. Arendt often did herself when, inter alia, she invoked secularization (1961, 129–​135), changes in the meaning of freedom (ibid., 147–​151), the “rise of the social” ([1958] 1998, 38–​49) and, in “The Concept of History,” changes in the conception of history. Her conceptualization of these long-​term transformations is not qualitatively different from the process concepts she rejects. Moreover, the idea of a process is by no means the same, nor it does entail commitment to, a total explanation that discounts events or individuals. Charles Tilly, for example, defines processes as, “events that produce the same immediate effects over a wide range of circumstances” (2007, 22). Processes such as state formation, democratization, decolonization, secularization and spiritualization (see Jaspers 1958) may be difficult to delineate precisely, but few doubt they can actually be traced across time spans in a variety of social contexts. Arendt was herself conversant with scholarship that made use of such “process-​concepts” but continued to insist that “history is a story of events and not of forces or ideas” ([1958] 1998, 252).

Conclusion In sum, although Hannah Arendt was hostile to the social sciences, her criticisms can be turned to constructive use, acting as caveats and counterweights to some of the excesses and simplifications that dominate our disciplines. Of all the social sciences, sociology is likely to be the most receptive to Arendt’s ideas –​which is not the same thing as accepting them at face value. None of the contributors to the Anthem Companion is a true believer. If Arendt is important to us, it is because she asks tough questions and offers alternative ways

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of thinking about matters that are vital to sociologists. Those questions and alternatives are explored and appraised in the nine chapters that follow.

Notes 1 Mannheim does not use this term explicitly. Nevertheless, it captures his view of philosophy’s self-​conception. John Locke originally used the term to characterize the relationship between epistemology and science. 2 Benhabib argues that action can occur in the private realm, in the form of friendship, love and cooperation. She goes on to contend that the field of action needs to be subdivided between its agonal forms that are oriented to glory and achievement and its narrative forms that aim at understanding and communication (see 2000, 126–​127). Both forms, however, are to be understood as action insofar as they are qualitatively distinct from the realm of fabrication.

References Arendt, Hannah. (1951) 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New  York:  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. —​—​—​. (1958) 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 1961. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin. —​—​—​. (1963) 1990. On Revolution. New York: Penguin. —​—​—​. 1968. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace. —​—​—​. (1969) 1972. “On Violence,” in Crises of the Republic, pp. 105–​198. New  York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. —​—​—​. 1994. Essays in Understanding, 1930–​1954:  Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken. —​—​—​. 2002. Denktagebuch 1950–​1973, Vol. 1. Edited by Ursula Ludz and Ingeborg Nordmann. Munich: Piper. —​—​—​. 2005. The Promise of Politics. New York: Schocken Books. Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl. 1992. Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers Correspondence 1926–​ 1969, edited by Lotte Köhler and Hans Saner. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Arendt, Hannah and Blücher, Heinrich. 1996. Within Four Walls: The Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–​1968, edited by Lotte Kohler. New  York: Harcourt. Baehr, Peter. 2002. “Identifying the Unprecedented: Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Critique of Sociology.” American Sociological Review 67, 804–​831. —​—​—​. 2008. Charisma, Caesarism and Fate. Historical Sources and Modern Resonances in the Work of Max Weber. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. —​—​—​. 2010. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Oxford:  Cornell University Press, Polity Press. Benhabib, Seyla. 2000. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.

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Bhaskar, Roy. 1989. Reclaiming Reality. A  Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy. London: Verso. Canovan, Margaret. 1994. “Politics as Culture: Hannah Arendt and the Public Realm”. In Hannah Arendt:  Critical Essays, edited by Lewis P.  Hinchman and Sandra Hinchman, 179–​205. Albany: State University of New York Press. —​—​—​. 2000. “Arendt’s Theory of Totalitarianism:  A  Reassessment.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, edited by Dana Villa, 25–​43. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Giddens, Anthony. 2003. Runaway World:  How Globalization Is Changing our Lives. Oxford: Polity Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Vol. 1. New York: Beacon Press. Heidegger, Martin. (1927) 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell. Jaspers, Karl. 1958. The Origin and Goal of History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Mannheim, Karl. (1929) 1993. “Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon.” In From Karl Mannheim, edited by Kurt H. Wolff, 399–​437. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Mannheim, Karl. 1936.  Ideology and Utopia:  An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, translated by L.  Wirth and E.  Shils. New  York:  Harcourt Brace. (Orig.  Ideologie und Utopie. Bonn: Cohen, 1929.) Putnam, Robert. 2000.  Bowling Alone:  the Collapse and Revival of the American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Richter, Melvin. 1995. The History of Political and Social Concepts:  A  Critical Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Runciman, Walter G. 2000. The Social Animal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. —​—​—​. 2010. Great Books, Bad Arguments. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tilly, Charles. 2007. Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Villa, Dana. 1999. Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Walsh, Philip. 2015. Arendt Contra Sociology: Theory, Society and Its Science. Burlington VT: Ashgate. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society, Volumes I and II, edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. Translators various. Berkeley: University of California Press. —​—​—​. (1919) 1994. “The Profession and Vocation of Politics.” In Weber: Political Writings, edited and translated by Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs, 309–269. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young-​Bruehl, Elisabeth. 2004. Hannah Arendt:  For Love of the World, 2nd edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Chapter 1 ARENDT AND TOTALITARIANISM Charles Turner

Introduction The term “totalitarianism” is an awkward one. First, while the suffix “-​ism” suggests an ideology, like liberalism or socialism, few have said “I am a totalitarian” in the way they have said “I am a liberal” or “I am a socialist.” Second, while “totalitarianism” is sometimes treated as the name of an object of inquiry, the adjective “totalitarian” is often used beyond the historical context in which it first arose. Ambiguity surrounds the scope of the term, too: Does it refer to forms of government, to types of state or to whole societies? Do we need it at all? Can we say what needs to be said by making use of other terms such as “tyranny” or “dictatorship”?

Totalitarianism between the Political and the Social A popular misconception has it that “totalitarianism” is a product of the Cold War. To be sure, for some scholars and politicians it has served as a “counter concept” to “liberalism” or “democracy.” Yet when Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, the word “totalitarian” was already more than 25 years old (Gleason 1995). It first appeared in Italy in 1923. Early that year, Mussolini had proposed a change in the Italian electoral law to allow the party with the largest share of the vote, as long as that was more than 25 per cent, to receive two-​thirds of the seats in the parliament, and thus be able to change the constitution. On 12 May, the leftist journalist and politician Giovanni Amendola published an article in Il Mundo in which he described this as a recipe for “a totalitarian system” of rule; this he contrasted with two others: “majoritarian” and “minoritarian.” As can often happen in political life, Amendola’s term for what he disapproved of was quickly adopted by those it was directed against. Mussolini himself referred to “our radical totalitarian will” and “the totalitarian state,” and in 1925 the Fascist theorist

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Giovanni Gentile went further and proposed a “total conception of life.” By this he meant that “it is impossible to be fascists in politics and non-​fascists in schools, non-​fascists in our families, non-​fascists in our daily occupations.” The difference between Amendola and Gentile is instructive. First, like Aristotle, who distinguished between monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by a few) and democracy (rule by all), Amendola gives us three and only three types of government. Second, he refers to forms of government, not to types of society and certainly not to a “total conception of life.” This is important because the question of whether we are talking about a “totalitarian government” or a “totalitarian state” or a “totalitarian society” hangs over most prominent work in the field. In an essay from the late 1920s, Carl Schmitt made a distinction that can help us understand this. He said that there is a quantitatively total state and a qualitatively total state: in the former, the activities of the state are driven by concerns that originate in society. The modern welfare state is an example insofar as much of the task of government is defined by questions of social policy that affect all citizens: the family, employment, housing and so on. The qualitatively total state does not attend so much to the administration of society, but does insist on exerting sovereign authority over society (Schmitt 2004, 118). As a student of Thomas Hobbes, Schmitt was a traditional authoritarian; Gentile, while agreeing that the state should exert authority over society, was a totalitarian in the sense that he thought that the state also needed to be “militantly invasive”: the education system in particular should be used to make fascists of everyone. Such invasiveness is only possible in modern states with a high degree of what Michael Mann calls “infrastructural power,” that is, the power to intervene in civil society; but Mann (1984) thought that insofar as they were both concerned with the shape of society and the lives of the people in it, and made extensive use of this power, little significant difference existed between Western welfare states and those of the Soviet bloc. The decisive difference between them lay elsewhere, namely, in the use they make of “despotic power,” the power –​that all modern states have available to them –​to repress dissent. For this reason Mann refused to use the totalitarian label; “authoritarian” captures perfectly well the way in which both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union made use of their despotic power. One criticism of Mann is that he misunderstands the character of the infrastructural power deployed in totalitarian states, seeing them as just another case of “state intervention.” Yet there is a difference between a state policy that, for instance, says “we need more engineers” or “we need more computer programmers” and one that seeks to shape the attitudes or conduct of each member of society in line with an explicit ideal of what it is to be a person. Claude Lefort captures something of this in commenting on the following

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passage from Trotsky’s late study of Stalin: “L’Etat, c’est moi (I am the state)” is almost a liberal formula by comparison with the actualities of Stalin’s totalitarian regime. While Louis XIV identified himself only with the state, the popes of Rome identified themselves with both the state and the Catholic Church, but only during the epoch of temporal power. The totalitarian state goes far beyond caesaropapism, for it controls the entire economy of the country as well. Stalin can say, unlike the Sun King, “La Societe, c’est moi (I am Society)” (quoted in Lefort 1988). Communism is not an extreme form of state intervention because “intervention” presupposes that civil society is separate from the state in the first place. Instead, Lefort argues that under communism, for the first time in history, society became self-​sufficient. Totalitarianism is not the triumph of the state over society, but, on the contrary, it is the “divinization” of society. As such, the exercise of political power is driven by an apolitical, social logic. Amendola and Lefort are at opposite ends of a spectrum of positions that scholars have adopted in trying to make sense of the totalitarian phenomenon. In surveying it we would have to keep two sets of questions firmly in mind, questions which loom large in Arendt’s account of totalitarianism. The first is empirical: How far did “totalitarian” states actually penetrate the everyday lives or even the minds of ordinary people, and to what extent were the actions of totalitarian governments driven by concerns about the living conditions and lifestyles of people? The second is methodological: To what extent should students of politics, of any politics including the politics of liberal democracies with minimal government, try to understand politics on its own terms, and to what extent should they understand it in terms of its “social” underpinnings? Another way of putting the last question is: Aristotle or Montesquieu? Arendt always insisted that by “totalitarianism” she was talking about a new form of government in history, not a new type of society (Friedrich 1954). She said this partly because she was impressed by how quickly Nazism had collapsed after World War II, which must have meant that, however repressive the Nazis had been, Nazism had failed to penetrate in a deep or long-​lasting way into the fabric of German society, and partly because she disliked sociology and the social sciences generally. Nevertheless, when talking of totalitarian government she is talking about something more than Amendola’s electoral laws. How much more? Durkheim (1960) called Montesquieu a forerunner of sociology because in the middle of the eighteenth century he had introduced a new, non-​ Aristotelian way of classifying governments. For Montesquieu, forms of government cannot be understood in their own terms; they must be related to two other things:  social structure and “the spirit of the laws.” His distinction between republic (embracing both aristocracy and democracy), monarchy and despotism is different from what Aristotle would have understood by

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them, for “the spirit of the laws” –​virtue in republics, honor in monarchies and fear in despotisms  –​and the social structures that make them possible are part of their very definition: republics, for instance, are only possible in small city-​states and with equality between citizens; monarchies arise in societies with a marked class hierarchy. Montesquieu said that in modern societies with large populations arranged in class hierarchies you cannot recreate classical republican government –​class-​divided modern “republics” with strong central governments would still have counted as “monarchies” to him –​and that if these hierarchies were flattened, the result might well be equality, but an equality of fear rather than of virtue. In short, despotism. The French revolutionary terror during Robespierre’s effort to establish a “reign of virtue” seemed to make his point, and it was left to Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1840s to show that, although equality of condition indeed made modern republics prone to despotism, they might –​if they allowed themselves to be instructed by America –​avoid it. In the 1940s and 1950s thinkers in the Montesquieu/​ Tocqueville tradition saw Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and communist Russia as confirmation of a dangerous potential built into democracy (Talmon 1952). Arendt does not see “totalitarianism” quite like this, but she does see the breakdown of class barriers and class loyalties as an important structural condition for this unprecedented form of government. On the other hand, when she confronts the totalitarian phenomenon head on, she writes mainly about totalitarian movements, totalitarian organization, ideology and the most extreme and distinctive totalitarian techniques of ruling, namely, the secret police and the concentration camp. “Everyday Stalinism” (Fitzpatrick 1999) and the social history of the Third Reich receive little attention. Before we discuss Arendt’s account, it is useful to mention Raymond Aron, who was involved in an important dialogue with her over totalitarianism (Baehr 2010c). Aron saw sociology and political science more as partners than antagonists, and this is clear from his use of the term “regime,” which means something more than government but less than society. He begins his account of totalitarianism by saying that “what Montesquieu tried to do for the types of regime which he found in history, we shall try to do for the specific regimes of industrial societies” (Aron 1965a, 29). He wrote this less than a decade after the appearance of Arendt’s Origins, at a time when some American thinkers –​ none of them pro-​Soviet –​were using “industrial society” as a generic term to describe both the capitalist democracies of the West and the communist societies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. For Aron, this failed to capture the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union, the most important of which was that the United States was a democracy and the Soviet Union was a one-​party state. That is a political science distinction. Yet we can also ask Montesquieu’s question about their “essential variables,” the

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basic attitudes on which they rest: democracy entails “respect for laws” and “a sense of compromise”; one-​party states depend on “fear” and “faith.” It is this last variable, “faith,” that makes these one-​party regimes of industrial society different from traditional despotisms: they not only rely on fear, but also mobilize the commitments of those subject to them; though nondemocratic, they are highly participatory. For Aron, totalitarian regimes are merely one variant of the one-​party state; in addition to the monopoly of politics by one party, they involve the following features: the party’s monopoly of both the means of coercion and the means of persuasion; the subjection of all economic and professional activities to state control; an idealized leader; the will to stamp the whole of the community with the imprint of an official ideology so that society and the state will merge; terror, in which the ideological enemy is more guilty than any common criminal (Aron 1965a, 53). The point here is that not all monopolistic parties have taken ideology seriously; while Amendola first introduced the term “totalitarian” in the context of Italian fascism, and while Italian Fascists were the most willing to embrace the term, from Aron’s perspective Italian fascism falls short of totalitarianism. Moreover, although German National Socialism and communism share the features just listed, for Aron Nazism is better described as “authoritarian” rather than totalitarian, because while it may have been murderous and “coordinated” all social and political organizations, it sought legitimacy within an existing social structure that it did not seek to transform root and branch. Bolshevism, by contrast, was an attempt to create a new type of social structure and ultimately a new type of human being. The Aryan to whom the future belonged was thought to already exist; by contrast, homo sovieticus had to be created through a supreme act of collective will. In Aron’s account, then, “totalitarianism” is part of a taxonomy: totalitarianism, fascism and authoritarianism are all subspecies of the species “one-​ party rule”; and one-​party rule is, along with “democracy,” one of two species of the genus “industrial society.” Arendt was after something more than a neat classification; she wanted less a conceptual map than what she called “understanding” and “judgment”:  the point of inquiry is not to put a particular regime in the right box, but to make sense of the catastrophes that befell millions of innocent people in the 1930s and 1940s, and to cultivate our capacity for discerning what is at stake for human beings who have to live in their shadow.

The Book Published in 1951, reissued in 1958 with additional material and two new chapters, then published again in 1968 with one of those chapters removed

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and a series of new prefaces added, The Origins of Totalitarianism is not an easy book to digest. The prehistory of its publication can help us understand why. Arendt had spent 1933 to 1941 in exile in Paris, where much of her time was devoted to the welfare of Jewish refugees. She was especially interested in the status post–​World War I international treaties accorded them, but also in the character of French anti-​Semitism and how it differed from the German variety. War in 1940 brought internment as an enemy alien, and the advent of the Vichy government saw her flee to the United States. She arrived in New York in 1941. The first confirmed reports of the nature and scale of the Holocaust in late 1942 made her determined to write a book on the subject, and by 1946, when she formally proposed a book on the roots of Nazism, provisionally titled Anti-​Semitism, Imperialism, Racism, she had already published essays on these topics as well as on the Dreyfus Affair, minorities and statelessness, and the difference between parties, movements and classes, in recently established journals such as Commentary, Jewish Social Studies, Partisan Review and the Review of Politics. The unwieldy character of Origins is partly the result of her efforts to put it together from these set-​piece publications. If that were not enough, in 1948, as the Soviet Union consolidated its grip on Eastern Europe, revelations began to appear about the Soviet labor camps. The result was threefold: an essay in July 1948 on the concentration camp for Partisan Review, a memo in December 1948 detailing a “research project on concentration camps” and, in 1951, The Origins of Totalitarianism. There were still three sections, but now they were anti-​Semitism, imperialism and … totalitarianism. The first two sections are almost exclusively about the roots of Nazism; in the final section, an effort is made to give German Nazism and Soviet communism –​or “Bolshevism” –​equal billing.

Arendt’s Theory of Totalitarianism Origins is not a methodologically watertight piece of social science, nor does Arendt see it as a contribution to a larger collective research programme. She does not begin with a definition of totalitarianism and then seek its causes; rather she assumes that we know, roughly, what we are talking about, the revelations about the worst excesses of the regimes in question, the scale of their crimes and the continued existence of one of them being fresh in everyone’s memory. Given these crimes, we need to break totalitarianism down into its “elements.” In a lecture from 1954, she wrote: “The elements of totalitarianism form its origins if by origins we do not understand ‘causes.’ Causality … is probably an altogether alien and falsifying category in the realm of the historical and political sciences. Elements by themselves probably never cause anything. They become origins of events if and when they crystallize into

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fixed and definite forms” (quoted in Young-​Bruehl 1982, 203). That hardly amounts to a methodological clarification, though it is a reasonable summary of what she does in the book; she is saying effectively that the rallies and speeches, the secret police, the terror, the camps, the torture and mass murder happened, and happened in a coordinated and systematic way. Many elements had to be in place for these things to happen on this scale. How they came together  –​crystallized  –​is not really a puzzle for historians to solve because in a sense political history itself has solved it for them. What we can do is to try to identify what those elements were, separate them out and isolate them for the purposes of analysis. We know that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, so we need to ask how anyone could have conceived of such a project of mass murder; this in turn requires a history of the changing role of Jews in European society and the (relatively minor) “Jewish question” in the nineteenth century. We know this could not have been done without a supreme organizational effort, so we need to know about modern bureaucracy. We know that millions supported Hitler and so we need to know what makes people willing to treat an attachment to their race, or the idea of race, as more important to them than their membership in a class. We know that Nazism was less nationalistic and more European than might first appear; by the same token we know that communism, for all its universal appeal, achieved its greatest success in Russia, and so we need to know about the “pan-​movements” of the late nineteenth century, which were themselves neither universalist nor nationalist. We know that both Bolshevism and Nazism were hostile to the nation-​state as the primary framework in which to organize political affairs, that they sought to galvanize their followers by appealing to different sources of loyalty, such as “the party” or “the people,” so we need to know what made the state incapable of commanding such loyalty itself. We know that the Nazis invaded country after country and sought to dominate Europe, so we need to know where this “drive to expansion” came from. We know that people were put in concentration camps, so we need to know about the origins of this device. We know that people were incarcerated in both concentration and labor camps for nothing they had done and without any legal process, so we need to know what made it possible for policy makers to place whole sections of the population “outside the law” and to disregard the idea of human rights that had been in place since the late eighteenth century. None of these things on its own is totalitarian. Totalitarianism arises out of their combination. What holds them all together? One is tempted to say, “total ideologies,” secular world views that have an answer to everything, that are so focused on an ultimate goal, and so committed to the idea that that goal is achievable that they place no limits on what political action can be about.

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Adapting Dostoyevsky one might then say: “If God is dead, everything is possible.” Yet the first edition lacked the chapter on “Ideology and Terror.” To be sure, there is much discussion of ideology in other chapters, but in general Arendt played down the influence of ideas on the structure and character of totalitarianism. She would have disagreed with Leonard Shapiro’s statement that “the concept of ‘totalitarianism’ may have existed in the minds of men long before Mussolini adopted, and tempted us to use, this word … A study of the concept of totalitarianism (as reflected in the history of political thought long before the word was invented) is therefore a necessary part of this inquiry” (Shapiro 1972; Shorten 2012). For instance, when in 1952 she applied for a Guggenheim scholarship to study “the totalitarian elements of Marxism,” she wrote: “The most serious gap in The Origins of Totalitarianism is the lack of an adequate conceptual and historical analysis of the ideological background of Bolshevism. This omission was deliberate. All other elements which crystallize into the totalitarian forms of movements and governments can be traced back to subterranean currents in Western history which emerged only when and where the traditional social and political framework of Europe broke down. Racism and imperialism, the tribal nationalism of the pan movements, and anti-​semitism, have no connection with the great political and philosophical traditions of the West” (Arendt, quoted in Young-​Bruehl 1982, 276). Arendt had been reluctant to see the catastrophe that had uprooted her and brought Europe to its knees as the product of European ideas. Or at least she was reluctant to see Bolshevism as the product of Marxism. Her treatment of Thomas Hobbes was different:  he was, apparently, the philosopher of the nascent European bourgeoisie (Arendt 1968b, 139–​147) and of imperialism (Arendt 1946a) and “provided political thought with the prerequisite for all race doctrines, that is the exclusion of humanity which constitutes the sole regulating idea of international law” (Arendt 1968b, 157). Even with the history of European ideas downplayed, the first two parts of Origins can feel like several books, and as history much of it is obsolete. We have better accounts, for instance, of nineteenth-​century anti-​Semitism, imperialism and public administration. However, ­chapter 9 on the decline of the nation-​state and the fate of the rights of man, is of enduring value, as is most of Part III, which deals with totalitarianism from its more immediate social structural conditions to its visceral features and deadly consequences. This section is less (waywardly) historical and more reflective. It is also more sociological than Arendt would avow. It begins, for instance, in the style of Montesquieu with an account of the social structure characteristic of totalitarian rule, then moves through totalitarian movements, their forms of organization, their use of propaganda (for external purposes) and indoctrination (for internal purposes), their efforts to seek power and their manner of exercising

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power once they have conquered state institutions. In the first edition, the account ended with the sections on the secret police and the concentration and labor camps, the culminating point of totalitarian rule. In the later editions, the chapter on “Ideology and Terror” reflects on what makes totalitarian governments “total” rather than merely criminal. Classlessness The first chapter of Part III is titled “a classless society.” The story that is often told of the nineteenth century is one of the emergence of modern classes and class conflict, and the growth of organizations able to articulate class interests, such as trade unions and modern political parties. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Marx had assumed that the development of capitalism would resolve itself into a final basic conflict between two hostile classes; Weber thought that the task of politics after World War I would be to realize, through a renewed parliamentary politics, the democratic ideals that had been around since the late eighteenth century and to incorporate a previously excluded working class when it returned from the front. The 1920s, however, were a ferment rather than an organized transition to democracy; in Germany at least, while seeking parliamentary representation, Nazis and communists regularly slugged it out on the streets. The ways of conducting politics that we may call totalitarian grew partly out of this and partly out of what Arendt sees as the transformation of classes into masses. Totalitarian movements are possible wherever there are masses who for one reason or another have acquired the appetite for political organization. Masses are not held together by a consciousness of a common interest and they lack that specific class articulateness which is expressed in determined, limited and obtainable goals. The term masses applies only where we deal with people who either because of sheer numbers or indifference or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on a common interest, into political parties or municipal governments or professional organizations or trade unions. Potentially, they exist in every country and form the majority of those large numbers of neutral, politically indifferent people who never join a party and hardly ever go to the polls. (Arendt 1968b, 311)

Groups that are concerned only with their own class interests and the securing of their material needs find it hard to produce leaders who can take care of the body politic as a whole or commit themselves to a life of public service. That was why for so long politics had been dominated by those with the resources, in Max Weber’s words, to “live for” politics, that is, the European

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nobility. The rise of the bourgeoisie to political prominence and the growth of workers’ organizations and parties brought to the fore new political leaders, but they often lacked political maturity or could engage in politics only if they were paid. Nevertheless, in Origins Arendt assumes that as long as the social structure preserved clear class divisions and hierarchies, the apolitical character of parties and professional politicians within a stable nation-​state was manageable –​not edifying or inspiring, but a manageable form of class compromise. This is a rough outline of German social democracy, and it is part of the background against which, in 1951 at least, she sees Nazism. Nazism and Bolshevism were neither a straightforward “revolt of the masses” nor the manipulation of passive masses by unscrupulous leaders. Arendt rather plays down the role of “charismatic” leaders like Hitler and Stalin, of strong men who could hold a national community together. Of course, if we take Weber’s definition of charisma seriously, then we will say that that is true of all political leaders, that charisma describes a relationship between leader and led, not the qualities of leaders themselves. But if Arendt could never take seriously the alleged mesmeric character of Hitler in particular, it was not because she wanted to use social science concepts properly. She did think that he represented a new type of mobster leader. One of her favourite distinctions was between politicians who are liars and those who are hypocrites (Arendt 1963h), but totalitarian leaders like Hitler, she says, were neither; not only did they not pull the wool over the eyes of their followers, they openly advertised their previous crimes. In the 1920s, in both Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, this contempt for moral standards tapped into the recent experience of the front generation, articulated most forcefully in Germany in the writings of Ernst Jünger (Arendt 1968b, 328–​330). For many German soldiers, World War I was a kind of purification in which individuals underwent basic existential experiences beyond morality, and traditional virtues of honor and courage and manliness seemed meaningless in the face of the technicity of the war; they also learned new modes of belonging and comradeship that transcended both class and nationhood. The experience of the front generation was a key chapter in the “breakdown of classes into masses.” They were interested in “the primacy of sheer action and the overwhelming force of sheer necessity,” “the experience of constant activity within the framework of overwhelming fatality” (Arendt 1968b, 331). In other words, the key to the political psychology of totalitarianism lies in the “selflessness” of followers rather than the persuasive power of those they follow. This is part of the reason she thinks that “dictatorship” or “despotism” are inadequate to capture the novelty of totalitarian rule; nor, for that matter, was totalitarianism the continuation of the German Lutheran or Russian tsarist traditions of submission to authority. Something changed between the late nineteenth century

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and the 1920s: the same people who in the 1920s were willing to join mass movements might in the 1890s (and before the upheavals of World War I), hanging on to a sense of individual self-​worth, have borne their frustrations in private. By contrast, people who have abandoned a concern with their own self-​preservation, have stopped identifying with their particular class or position in the class structure, and also with existing forms of authority, and feel they have nothing to lose, are “open,” not simply to being ruled over passively, but to new modes of belonging and new avenues of action. Hitler’s demagogic speeches, she says, were not acts of persuasion or rhetoric; they were acts of organization. Indeed, it is here, in the sphere of organization –​a traditional concern of sociology! –​rather than in the content of their doctrines –​a traditional concern of political philosophy –​that Arendt found Nazism and Bolshevism original and innovative: “The true goal of totalitarian propaganda is not persuasion but organization … for this purpose, originality in ideological content can only be considered an unnecessary obstacle” (361). This is interesting because it suggests that too much ideology may hamper rather than nourish the capacity of people to commit themselves to organizations. Or at any rate, “The organization of an entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime. Propaganda adds the power of organization to the feeble voice of argument.” Note here that this emphasis on organization has nothing to do with the thesis that totalitarianism is the end point of a continuous “rise of modern bureaucracy”; totalitarian organization in its formative years is geared to the success of the distinctive form of totalitarian collectivity. That form of collectivity is the movement. Movements are fluid, flexible, in important senses extra-​political, and are not the same as political parties. Whereas Max Weber and Robert Michels had seen the political party as the quintessential modern collective political actor, had stressed its bureaucratic or oligarchical character and characterized its leaders as managers or heads of self-​perpetuating dynasties with the masses as election fodder, the central feature of Nazism at least was that it was a movement as much as a party, that it mobilized its followers rather than periodically seeking the acclamation of voters, that these followers did not come from a core constituency, and that it was capable of constant radicalization rather than bureaucratic stasis. Organization Arendt was impressed by four things about totalitarian organizations (much of what impressed her derived from her understanding of Nazism). First, even while the Nazi Party had a large membership, it jealously maintained a

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distinction between members and sympathizers, seeking to keep the former number stable while increasing the latter. It did this not because non-​members could not be trusted, but, on the contrary, in order that members could see potential supporters everywhere: “To the party member it appears that anyone whom the movement has not expressly singled out as an enemy (a Jew, a capitalist) is on his side, that the world is full of secret allies, who merely cannot, as yet, summon up the necessary strength of mind and character to draw the logical conclusions from their own convictions” (Arendt 1968b, 366). This is far more productive for the fanatic than a simple friend–​enemy distinction; totalitarian fanatics, Arendt is suggesting, are the opposite of Christian missionaries teaching people that they are sinners. Second, however, the member–​non-​member distinction is then subject to further subdivisions, so that the majority of party members may have professional and social relationships that remain largely unaffected. In fact, there is a “carefully graduated hierarchy of militancy” which allows the hard core never to have to face the “normal,” outside world. There is always a grade that is more normal or pragmatic or apolitical than your own, and new and more radical layers can always be added. This creates what she calls a “hierarchy of contempt” (Arendt 1968b, 384), the contempt being directed at the more gullible members closer to normal society. In short, the hard core of the movement and then of the party in power consists of people who hold fast to a set of fictions, fictions protected by a combination of indoctrination and organizational structure. Third, Arendt describes totalitarian organizations as “secret societies in broad daylight,” in which everyone seeks to show that they belong and are distinct from those who do not; unlike with most secret societies, however, members of totalitarian organizations pride themselves not on being unlike the majority or “the masses,” but being unlike a minority:  the Jews or the bourgeois. There was an emphasis on proving that one did not belong to this minority: in Nazi Germany one did this by tracing one’s bloodline, in the early days of the Soviet Union by writing autobiographies that showed that one had the right sort of proletarian background. In this respect, totalitarianism represents a perverse extension of the principle of the sect to most of society. Max Weber had defined the difference between churches and sects in terms of the demands they make on their members, and argued that while churches demanded rather little  –​regular attendance, ritual observance and so on  –​ sects demanded a constant effort to prove oneself in the eyes of others (Turner 1999; Weber 1978a, 1204). Here there is an interesting difference between Nazism and communism which suggests why communism has attracted the “totalitarian label” more readily: under Nazi rule, proof of ancestry could be definitive, as long as one did not go too far back and discover traces of Jewish

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blood; by the 1930s, the communist who wished to show that he was genuine had not only to prove his background but to prove himself by deeds, both in the workplace and in the communal apartments or agricultural collectives in which he might live his resolutely non-​bourgeois existence; in this way his whole life might be lived with a measure of uncertainty hanging over him. By contrast, once the German had proved himself and as long as he adhered to the new ritual prescriptions the Nazis laid down, then he could continue his family or professional life. Finally, totalitarian movements set up their own parallel or front organizations that mirrored or duplicated organizations of state and civil society, and this duplication of offices continued when they came to power. So while the administrative structures and state functionaries of the German Reich remained in place, the Nazis added their own, and this was where the real power lay. For instance, in addition to the older “regions” there were now “Gaue,” which did not exactly coincide with them; the official foreign office was powerless in the face of the foreign affairs bureau of the party; in Russia, the all-​Russian soviet congress of the early days of communism did not disappear, it simply lost its significance to the Bolshevik party. In fact, no office was abolished once it had become powerless: the only rule of which everybody in a totalitarian state may be sure is that “the more visible government agencies are, the less power they carry, and the less is known of the existence of an institution, the more powerful it will ultimately turn out to be” (Arendt 1968b, 403). In Russia, the soviets as collective bodies were most visible but were less powerful than the Bolshevik party, and that, being still very visible, was less powerful than the NKVD, the secret police. In fact, in both Bolshevism and Nazism the secret police becomes the dominant agent of state, so far marginalizing all other branches of state administration that to speak of a totalitarian state is something of a misnomer. This is the clue to Arendt’s otherwise mysterious phrase, “the so-​called totalitarian state” (Arendt 1968b, 392–​419): the legislature is suspended or its work is meaningless, the judiciary compromised, the regular police reduced to the status of minor functionaries, and the executive itself sacrificed to the needs of an inner circle of conspirators. Above all, the army is placed under stricter civilian control than in any liberal democracy. What is the function of the secret police in a totalitarian system of rule? There have, after all, been secret police in many previous regimes. In the early stages, Arendt says, their role is little different from that of the secret police in any modern regime:  the hunting down of suspects, of people hostile to the regime. What makes the secret police totalitarian is when, the opponents of the regime having been defeated, new “objective enemies” are discovered and then pursued without respite. Yet insofar as these objective enemies are defined according to the will of the leader, today’s objective enemy may be

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replaced by a new one tomorrow. So there is a paradox of the totalitarian secret police: “In terms of power, they have sunk to the level of the executioner” (Arendt 1968b, 426). Ideology The edition we all now read contains the famous final chapter, “Ideology and Terror,” in which the theme of ideology is broached so near the end that it might be mistaken for a conclusive summing up of Arendt’s thought about the essence of totalitarian rule. That would be premature, and perhaps she never really resolved the tension between what she says there and c­ hapters 10 and 11, where she stresses the importance of organization and the emptiness of ideology. Not that such emptiness need be a barrier to the cultivation among members of totalitarian organizations of intensity and unwavering commitment. On the contrary. “No matter how radically they might have been phrased, every definite political goal which does not simply assert or circumscribe the claim to world rule, every definite political program which deals with issues more specific than ‘ideological questions of importance for centuries,’ is an obstruction for totalitarianism” (Arendt 1968b, 324). One might even say that this was a form of faith that was all the more powerful for its lack of detailed content. The more vague the big picture, the less need there is to ask whether a particular policy does or does not fit with it; anything can be made consistent with it. George Orwell, writing in 1946, had gone further: “What is new in totalitarianism is that its doctrines are not only unchallengeable but also unstable. They have to be accepted on pain of damnation, but on the other hand they are liable to be changed at a moment’s notice” (Orwell 2001, 386). It is not only “objective enemies” who can change from one day to the next. In saying that totalitarian ideology has no detailed content, Arendt may have been influenced by Franz Neumann, who in Behemoth called Nazi ideology a mishmash of poorly understood ideas taken from different traditions (Herf 1984; Neumann 1942). Nevertheless, had ideology under Nazism or Bolshevism been no more than a matter of vague ideas or ideas entertained for purely pragmatic reasons, it is doubtful whether it would have been able, as she says it was, to dominate a person “from within” and “take possession of man as a whole” (Arendt 1968b, 336). So what is it about ideology that makes this possession possible? Ideology is not illusion or cognitive weakness, something defective in comparison with the correct or scientific view of reality. Nor is ideology the study or science of ideas. On the contrary, ideologies are themselves sets of ideas –​or rather single ideas –​which, as -​isms, claim to explain everything. They do this not by painstaking inquiry and the testing of hypothesis, but

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by a “logic” that amounts to the unfolding of a single basic premise. They represent the very opposite of human curiosity: “The word ‘race’ in racism does not signify any genuine curiosity about the human races as a field for scientific exploration but is the ‘idea’ by which the movement of history is explained as one consistent process” (Arendt 1968b, 469). History here is crucial –​“ideology” is not interested in the mystery of being or in eternal verities. But the crucial point is that instead of applying the idea to history, ideology views history as the development or unfolding of that idea. One can, for example, adopt a materialist approach to the study of history, and study history only from this one-​sided point of view, and still contribute something valuable to scholarship. In this sense Marxism is not an ideology. It becomes an ideology when you say history is the history of class struggle, when you stop treating the perspective with which you try to understand history as a perspective and see history as the unfolding of this one idea, an idea which can never be modified because you never allow it to encounter alternative perspectives or evidence that might challenge it. Even then this ideology is not totalitarian  –​it may be simply a form of private dogmatism or blinkeredness, of which the nineteenth century furnished several new examples. It becomes totalitarian when the experiences in which it is originally based become central to politics. This means that rather than being an “origin” of totalitarianism, ideologies are vital tools in the hands of totalitarian leaders, but powerful ones because they offer total explanations, and provide their adherents –​numbered in the millions with the right training –​with a “sixth sense,” allowing them to ignore the inconvenient experiences or realities that might confront them with their five senses. The ultimate effect, though, is the cultivation of a sort of pseudo-​logical ruthlessness so all-​embracing that it destroys the original idea or causes people to forget it. Instead they become caught up in a “logic” that is anything but static. An example of this logic is the formula that says that the party has ultimate knowledge of history, that at this or that moment it is bound to happen that certain crimes will be committed, crimes that deserve punishment, and that the party will infallibly discover the perpetrators. Moreover, “totalitarian rulers rely on the compulsion with which we can compel ourselves” (Arendt 1968b, 473), so if you are a party member who the party has decided is guilty, “logic” requires that you confess, because if you do not then you will be opposing the very thing that gave meaning to your existence. Put another way, most ideologists have never had an “idea” in their lives. Arendt here is offering more of a compelling description than an explanation of a phenomenon that remains as perplexing today as it was in the late 1930s, the readiness of people to confess to crimes they did not commit. Yet it perhaps helps us to understand why she also speaks of the ephemerality of

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totalitarianism, and is impressed by the apparent speed with which in postwar Germany, East and West, Nazism disappeared from the political scene. At first it looks like a conundrum:  if people were inwardly transformed by indoctrination, if ideology worked, you may have to accept that it can survive external changes in regime; on the other hand, if you say that there was no internal transformation and that that explains why people in the postwar Federal Republic of Germany could adapt themselves to liberal and social democracy, you have to ignore the fact that strenuous denazification efforts had to be made in both West and East Germany, and that those efforts were not unambiguously successful, not for a generation. Arendt writes that “the moment the movement, that is the fictitious world which sheltered them, is destroyed, the masses revert to their old status of isolated individuals who either happily accept a new function in a changed world or sink back into their old desperate superfluousness” (Arendt 1968b, 363). They “quietly give up the movement as a bad bet.” Of course, as Michael Mann has shown, support for Nazism in power came from many sections of a society that could still be analyzed in class terms:  professionals  –​who were overrepresented  –​did not have to live in a fictitious world in order to be committed Nazis. That is true, but what Arendt is suggesting is that even for the truly committed Nazi or Bolshevik ideologue, the power of ideology under totalitarian rule came not from the idea that spawned the ideology but from the logic –​ultimately a political logic –​with which it is pursued to the point that the idea is forgotten. Thus after the collapse of Nazism there were large numbers of residual Nazis who, whatever the strength of their beliefs, were deprived of the political circumstances in which Nazi “logic” could be exercised. The camps While Arendt had a debate with herself about the relative importance of organization and ideology, she had no doubt about the concentration and labor camps. These are the central defining institution –​or anti-​institution –​ of totalitarian rule, and in discussing them she takes the account onto an altogether different plane of reflection. Of course Russia already had a long history of penal servitude in the Siberian wastes, and the British invented the “concentration camp” during the Boer War; but these were contingent, not necessary features of tsarism and British imperialism, and they had a clear, if unpleasant purpose. For Arendt, the labor and concentration camps are, paradoxically enough, central features of totalitarian rule precisely because they have no purpose beyond themselves. Had she been less hostile to Max Weber she might have said that they were not zweckrational, purpose-​rational, that is, they were not a means to an end. Since Weber’s time, critical theorists

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of all stripes have seen a world dominated by purpose-​or “instrumental” rationality as an alienated world, and they have often opposed to it the idea, either utopian or nostalgic, of activities that are their own justification, that are not engaged in for the sake of something else. For Arendt, the camps represent a perverted mirror of such activity-​for-​its-​own-​sake: they operated at maximum capacity precisely when the political opponents of the regime had been defeated; the inmates were worked to death, yet their labor produced little tangible product. Both Nazism and Bolshevism elevated “labor” to the highest, most noble form of human activity, and the “worker” (or in Heinrich Himmler’s vision of an SS super-​race, worker-​soldier; Dwork and van Pelt 1996) into the exemplar of the noble human being; precisely for this reason they reduced it to something meaningless for their opponents. Later, in The Human Condition, Arendt would conclude from this that the character of “laboring” itself is such that it can never do the job that the Nazis and Bolsheviks thought it could; she constructed a hierarchy of ways of being human in which “laboring” was at the bottom, lower than the activity of fabricating raw materials into products, lower still than the supreme activity of interacting with other human beings through speech in public settings. That supremely human activity is, for Arendt, a political one. The sense of truly political –​and truly human –​conduct is there already in Origins (Taminaux 2002), albeit in an undeveloped form. To later generations brought up on the mountain of survivor testimony, the section titled “Total Domination” may well feel sparse and perfunctory. Yet it remains important for the directness with which it seeks to get to the heart of what the camps mean –​or do not mean. Arendt says that the camps were unprecedented because they were the first systematic attempt in history to dismantle a human being physically, juridically and morally. They were an attempt to reduce a human being to a bundle of reactions not discernibly different from those of an animal. They were experiments in the elimination of spontaneity, and of the conditions that make spontaneity possible. Those conditions are, in an important sense, political conditions. Today we might say that the camps were the most extreme example of the deprivation of human rights, but already in the last chapter of Part II, on the fate of refugees and stateless persons in the 1920s and 1930s, she writes that human rights can be sustained and defended, they have any force, only within the context of organized polities. Which means for her that the worst thing that can happen to a human being is to be without a political community, to be cast off from the conditions under which one’s “human rights” may mean anything in the first place (both the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens were just that, declarations, but at the same time formulations of criteria of membership in a

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political community). Because in Origins Arendt had not yet formulated a stark contrast between the camps –​their destruction of the person –​and an ideal of fully human political conduct, she portrays them as the consequence of the collapse of a modern European tradition in which political life is organized through nation-​states, in which the state is the guarantor of human rights and in which when people act politically they do so the basis of a relatively stable sense of their self-​or class interests. In such a “normal” political world, people have to be both kept apart and brought together, and we can distinguish between societies and political systems on the basis of how the involvement and detachment of their members are provided for. One way in which we can think about this is to say that the barriers that keep people apart are provided by positive laws, that these positive laws are the product of human artifice, and that many political communities in the past have known the difference between this positive  –​and necessarily imperfect –​law and something else, a higher ideal known as natural or divine law. In the chapter titled “Ideology and Terror,” Arendt says that totalitarian rule was distinct in this respect, but not because it was a lawless tyranny. On the contrary, its distinctiveness lay in the fact that it sought to do away with this distinction between higher and lower, natural and positive law, by reducing the lower to the higher. Instead of acknowledging that positive law was the product of human artifice and thus a contingent thing subject to alternation, both Nazism and Bolshevism sought to reduce law to a higher purpose, to the supreme law of “nature” on one hand (Nazism) and the law of “history” on the other (Bolshevism). In most societies, people may see the law as a framework for their ordinary activities, something they take account of to a greater or lesser degree, but at any rate something “external” to them, so that they may obey the law without thinking about it; under totalitarian rule, according to Arendt, they are expected to be an “embodiment” of the law, to bear it in their person. Instead of giving people a space to breathe by separating them while providing a common framework for their voluntary collective doings, law under totalitarian rule both isolates them from one another far more than it does in a democracy, and yet binds them together all the more tightly, with “iron bands” as members of a single purported community. It divides people not into law abiders and lawbreakers, but into those who are needed for a supreme collective project and those who are superfluous, extraneous to it; the latter it places outside any legal framework at all. And this is what the camps were about, why they were possible. They were neither prisons nor correctional institutions, because to be placed in one of these a person has to be recognized as a legal subject, as one who through his actions is capable of breaking the law. Instead, there was a radical division between those inside and those beyond the law, a division that ran parallel to

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that between the heroes of labor and those for whom labor was a degradation beyond all punishment. Indeed, the ultimate degradation lay not in what the camps demanded of those inside them, but in the fact that they demanded nothing at all save laboring that would end in death. Or rather, not in death as we would recognize it, with a known place of burial and the forms of ritual to accompany the final act of departure from the world (Herling 1951). The life of the juridically, morally and physically emasculated human –​or nonhuman –​being ended merely in “holes of oblivion.”

Criticisms The mountain of commentary on Arendt’s work continues to accumulate and here we can only make a few selected critical remarks and suggest some points of relevance to students of politics and society today. Arendt’s account of the breakdown of class structures and the entry of the masses into politics leaves something to be desired: “The fall of protecting class walls transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass of furious individuals who had nothing in common except their vague apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed” (Arendt 1968b, 315) is not really an explanation, nor is the claim that the psychology of European mass man is one in which there is a “weakening of the instinct for self-​preservation” and the feeling that the self does not matter. There is no doubt that mass movements of the 1920s attracted traditional non-​joiners. Theodor Abel’s remarkable 1936 study of 600 Nazi Party members’ autobiographical essays showed that. Arendt cites this in her bibliography, but when she says that ‘the chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships” (Arendt 1968b, 317), it is mere speculation. And as Michael Mann pointed out on the basis of his own reading of Abel, there was nothing especially distinctive about the class or occupational profile of Nazi Party members once the Nazi regime had established itself. In fact, respectable middle-​class professionals were disproportionately represented (Mann 2004). Arendt is also on possibly shaky ground when she attempts Montesquieu-​ style generalization based on comparative sociology. For instance, she claims that totalitarian movements existed in many European countries after World War I, but that, in the 1930s, the lack of large numbers of people or raw material meant that countries like Poland or Hungary became party or class dictatorships but not totalitarian states. But while the size of Germany and the Soviet Union is undeniable, she seems to want this to be a rule of historical experience. So totalitarianism in Nazi Germany was less extreme than in

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Russia until Germany invaded Poland and then the Soviet Union itself; when this happened, expansion eastwards “furnished large masses of people and made the extermination camps possible” (Arendt 1968b, 311). She then tries to apply the point about size to other cases; the chances for totalitarian rule are “frighteningly good in the traditional lands of oriental despotism, in India and China, where there is an almost inexhaustible material to feed the power-​ accumulating and man-​destroying machinery of total domination” (Arendt 1968b, 311). Indeed there was, though the fact that India did become a reasonably functioning democracy while China did not reminds us that demography is at most necessary, not a sufficient condition for totalitarianism. Arendt may have meant no more than this, but such modesty also reminds us that the generalizations that are most useful for comparative sociological and political analysis tend to be more complex, involving several factors at once: demography, class structure, point on a scale of economic development, elite formation, technology and so on (Moore 1966a; Skocpol 1979). Finally we may note an instructive omission, albeit one largely beyond Arendt’s control. The secret police and the camps may have perverted the meanings of labor and law, but in many ways interaction itself was perverted. In her most philosophical mood Arendt saw the camps as the destruction of human spontaneity, but we may add that that destruction was built into the system of rule on the outside too. To be sure, she says that, because of the presence of the secret police and its pursuit of objective enemies, “Provocation, once only the specialty of the secret police, becomes a method of dealing with his neighbour which everybody, willingly or unwillingly, is forced to follow. Everyone, in a way, is the agent provocateur of everyone else … every word becomes equivocal and subject to retrospective interpretation” (Arendt 1968b, 430–​431). But the destruction of spontaneity manifested itself in less drastic ways, in the formalization and ritualization of many aspects of everyday life which in reasonably well-​functioning democracies are left to their own devices. We are all familiar with the spectacular May Day parades or footage of the Nuremberg rallies, both featuring ranks of soldiers and workers chanting monosyllables in unison, but more recent scholarship has explored the ways in which even everyday acts such as greetings or filing reports were transformed from something routine but unconscious and effortless into something highly stylized, ritualized and requiring the person’s explicit awareness of the right way to do things (Allert 2006; Kharkhordin 1999; Yurchak 2006). Interestingly, many of the authors who demonstrate most convincingly just how far Nazi and Bolshevik rule penetrated into the everyday practices of people are keen to reject the use of “totalitarianism” (Geyer and Fitzpatrick 2009).

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Totalitarianism Today What of Arendt’s account today? With “classic” totalitarian regimes  –​and the camps –​gone, her work encourages us to think about political –​or apolitical –​movements which combine ideology, terror, organization, propaganda and indoctrination in ways capable of attracting a significant following and endangering civilized society, be it liberal or socialist, capitalist or communist, Western or Eastern. The obvious candidates here are the Taliban, ISIS and other Al Qaeda offshoots. All are marked by an ideology, or a series of answers to all of life’s questions that brook no alternative; all deploy propaganda towards the outside world while seeking to indoctrinate their members inwardly; and all deploy extreme forms of terror to cow populations in areas under their control. On the other hand, while all are marked by ruthless organizational efficiency, the totalitarian distinction between the inner core of the movement and the mass of followers who are mostly potential allies is less marked. In this respect they combine elements of totalitarian movements with mafia-​like business practices and, when in government, have deployed techniques of ruling more at home in traditional despotisms. There has been much discussion in recent years about whether totalitarian movements should be described as “political religions,” and given that Islamicist movements have often displayed more totalitarian features than others, this has shaded into a separate discussion about the totalitarian character of Islam itself. Two remarks are in order. First, we may bear in mind Leszek Kolakowski’s claim that the difference between religions and total ideologies is that while religions may seek to regulate all aspects of personal life, total ideologies seek to abolish that life. In Durkheimian terms, they seek the total integration of the person rather than the mere regulation of his conduct (today’s political suicide bombers are surely altruists in Durkheim’s terms); however all-​embracing their claims on the person, by contrast, religions do recognize, to a greater or lesser degree, that different modes of activity may have a logic that owes nothing to religion. Thus the adherent of a religion, with its ethics and its particular plausibility structure, may be able to conduct himself according to these nonreligious logics –​such as science or art –​without compromising his faith. In other words, the distinction between the sacred and the profane entails a coming to terms with the existence of the profane, with all that is not sacred. Most of the world religions have had to live with the compromises to which this gives rise; the believer in a total ideology, who sees significance everywhere, refuses to do so. And just as the victims of totalitarian regimes may be consigned to holes of oblivion, those who lived under them neither as party members

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nor as followers nevertheless often found themselves, as Ernest Gellner put it, without a “profane bolt hole,” without a place to go to be relieved of the burden of finding the whole world –​from work and family to chess or stamp collecting –​meaningful (Gellner 1994). If today there is any sense in speaking of a struggle between liberal or social democracy and various forms of totalitarianism, then one way of being on the side of liberal or social democracy is to accept that there are aspects of your everyday life that just do not matter, and that many of the things that do matter have their own rules and their own logic which a single world view, however vague, however flexible, cannot account for.

References Allert, Tilman. 2009. The Hitler Salute:  The Meaning of a Gesture. London:  St. Martin’s Press. Andreski, Stanislav. 1964. “Old and New Elements in Totalitarianism.” In The Uses of Comparative Sociology, 311–​322. Berkeley: University of California Press. Applebaum, Anne. 2003. Gulag. London: Allen Lane. Arendt, Hannah. 1946a. “Imperialism: Road to Suicide.” Commentary 1 (February): 27–​35. —​—​—​. 1963h. On Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin. —​—​—​. 1968b. The Origins of Totalitarianism, 3rd edition. New York: Harcourt Brace. Aron, Raymond. 1965a. Democracy and Totalitarianism. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Baehr, Peter. 2002. “Identifying the Unprecedented: Hannah Arendt and the Critique of Sociology.” American Sociological Review 67(6): 804–​831. —​—​—​. 2010c. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bruce, Gary. 2010. The Firm. The Inside Story of the Stasi. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Buber-​Neumann, Margerethe. 2009. Under Two Dictators. London: Pimlico. Durkheim, Emile. 1960. Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Dwork, Deborah and Jan van Pelt. 1996. Auschwitz:  1270 to the Present. New  York:  W.W. Norton and Company. Herf, Jeffrey. 1984. Reactionary Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1999. Everyday Stalinism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —​—​—​. 2005. Tear off the Masks:  Identity and Imposture in 20th Century Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Friedrich, Carl ed. 1954. Totalitarianism: Proceedings of a conference held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, March 1953. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Furet, Francois and Ernst Nolte. 2001. Fascism and Communism. Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press. Gellately, Robert. 1990. The Gestapo and German Society. Oxford: Clarendon. —​—​—​. 1996. “Denunciation in 20th Century Germany:  Aspects of Self-​Policing in the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic.” Journal of Modern History 68(4): 931–​967.

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Gellner, Ernest. 1994. Conditions of Liberty. London: Hamish Hamilton. Geyer, Michael and Sheila Fitzpatrick, eds. 2009. Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gleason, Abbot. 1995. Totalitarianism:  The Inner History of the Cold War. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Goldman, Wendy. 2011. “Family Secrets.” In Inventing the Enemy: Denunciation and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 140–​198. New York: Cambridge University Press. Halfin, Igal. 2003. Terror in My Soul:  Communist Autobiographies on Trial. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Herling, Gustav. 1951. A World Apart. London: Heinemann. Jünger, Ernst. (1929) 1991. “Total Mobilisation.” In The Heidegger Controversy:  A  Critical Reader, edited by Richard Wolin, 119–​139. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kharkhordin, Oleg. 1995. “The Soviet Individual: Genealogy of a Dissimulating Animal.” In Global Modernities, edited by Mike Featherstone, 209–​226. London: Sage. —​—​—​. 1999. The Individual and the Collective in Russia:  A  Study of Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kim, Michael, Michael Schoenhals and Yong-​Woo Kim, eds. 2013. Mass Dictatorship and Modernity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Klemperer, Victor. 1998. I Shall Bear Witness. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Koestler, Arthur. 1940. Darkness at Noon. London: Cape. Lefort, Claude. 1988. “The Logic of Totalitarianism.” In The Political Forms of Modern Society. Cambridge: Polity. —​—​—​. 2007. Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press. Levi, Primo. 1987. If This Is a Man. London: Picador. Mann, Michael. 1984. “The Autonomous Power of the State.” European Journal of Sociology 25: 185–​213. —​—​—​. 2004. Fascists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milosz, Czeslaw. 1953. The Captive Mind. London: Secker and Warburg. Moore, Barrington. 1966a. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. London: Penguin. Neumann, Franz. 1942. Behemoth. London: Victor Gollancz. Orwell, George. 2001. “The Prevention of Literature.” In Orwell and Politics. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Plessner, Helmuth. (1928) 1999. The Limits of Community. New York: Humanity Books. Rabinach, Anson. 2006. “Moments of Totalitarianism.” History and Theory 45(1): 72–​100. Schmitt, Carl. (1932) 2004. Legality and Legitimacy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Shapiro, Leonard. 1972. Totalitarianism. London: Macmillan. Shorten, Richard. 2004. “Europe’s 20th Century in Retrospect.” The European Legacy 9(3): 285–​304. —​—​—​. 2012. Totalitarianism and Modernism. London: Palgrave. Simmel, Georg. 1958. “Secrecy.” In The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited by Kurt Wolff. New York: Free Press. Skocpol, T. 1979. States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Talmon, Jakob. 1952. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. London: Secker and Warburg. Taminiaux, Jacques. 2002 “The Philosophical Stakes in Arendt’s Genealogy of Totalitarianism.” Social Research 69(2): 423–​446.

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Turner, Charles. 1999. “Weber and Dostoyevsky on Church, Sect and Democracy.” In Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy, edited by Sam Whimster, 162–​175. London: St. Martin’s Press. Weber, Max. 1978a. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Young-​Bruehl, Elisabeth. 1982. Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Yurchak, Alexei. 2006. Everything Was Forever until It Was No More. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Chapter 2 THE HUMAN CONDITION AND THE THEORY OF ACTION John Levi Martin

Action and Praxis The sociological approach to action An act is something undertaken (1) by an actor, (2) oriented to a specific future end; (3)  in a situation that channels how this end can be reached; and (4)  in a normative environment constraining how these are combined. Or so wrote Talcott Parsons ([1949] 1968). This conception of action still seems to be the fundamental one assumed in most sociological work, even much American theory, despite it being the focus of vigorous attack from the most important American school of social thought, the pragmatists. Still, a revolt against this conception began to pick up steam in the early 1970s, mostly originating in anthropology (see Ortner 1984), though  –​significantly, as I will make clear in closing –​preceded by political philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1962, 62). In American sociology, it was Bourdieu who first arrived, like an explorer from a foreign land, with this alternative conception as cargo ([1972] 1977). Yet as Bourdieu’s visibility grew, the crusty barnacles of traditional action theory began covering the hull of the vessel he had come on –​certainly this is true of his reception in the United States, in which Bourdieu became little more than a rational choice theorist for agents with a multiple personality disorder. Field theory devolved into the implicit claim that there were different arenas of striving, each with a potentially independent preference structure.1 It is for this reason that Arendt’s work may be so important for the social sciences, which have largely lapsed back into traditional action theories, not even understanding what the alternative might be. While one could attempt to recreate such a theory of practice from the works of John Dewey, his writing often lacks the painterly qualities necessary to show, and not merely tell, what

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this other vision of action might be (e.g., [1922] 1930). The Human Condition is a remarkable work of conceptual history and critique, one that questions assumptions that sociology has deemed unquestionable, and, in particular, one that offers a deeper understanding of the nature of politics than is to be found among any of our theorists. To be able to even appreciate what Arendt was trying to do, we must first free ourselves from the assumption that action just is as Parsons defined it. To do this, I briefly summarize Aristotle’s approach to action, to which Arendt was to return. Aristotle’s conception We may recall that to Aristotle (Politics [Pol] 1280b52), the city-​state is connected with the pursuit of virtue. But we often interpret this in the Victorian sense in which we have learned to associate virtue (originally from the Latin for manly) with sanctimonious restraint (of which the paradigm is virginity, especially a woman’s lack of contact with a man). For Aristotle, virtue [arête] was a quality of something, specifically, its excellence (Nicomachean Ethics [NE] 1106a15). The question he considered crucial is how free men can carry out noble actions, actions worthy of a free man (Pol 1332a10). What should one be doing? What should be the ends of our actions? Since Aristotle accepted that some ends were only intermediaries, means to other ends, we can find the good by pursuing such chains of ends to one that is terminal (NE 1049a15; 1097a20). When we do this, we find that happiness and self-​sufficiency (which turn out to be equivalent) are terminals. Thus the happiness of a “serious person” (an excellent one) is the final end. But –​for reasons that Arendt will focus on –​this turns out to require the form of a polis, a city-​state. Answering the question of ethics requires posing the question of political science.3 Aristotle’s political science begins from the assumption that some by birth are fit to rule, others to be ruled (Pol 1254a20). This fitness is literally embodied, as one can see the upright posture of a natural master in contrast to the hunched servility of the slave (Pol 1245b25). There are, however, some who are free, at least legally, yet seem unfit to be placed in a position of rule; inversely, there are also some who technically are (at any one time) ruled, but seem to have all the excellence of the natural ruler (Pol 1255b20). We cannot simply take the ruler/​ruled distinction from what we see before us. What, then, is the most fundamental way of according to each the political position he deserves? Aristotle made a distinction between poiesis (making) and praxis (action) (also see Metaphysics 1064a10). A craftsman, like a slave, must be oriented to making things, as both produce necessaries for others to live off of (Pol 1278a). For this reason, the craftsman can never be virtuous. Why? Because making

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is inherently oriented to something else as the end. Work in this sense is inherently contaminating, not because it identifies the subaltern as such (though this is true: Pol 1337b1, b20; 1338a1, b2), but because it subordinates the act to the end. In sum, understanding the craft of constituting a political community for Aristotle required understanding the natures of the men who composed it, and these were, in his mind, determined largely by class relations. For these three classes –​the free man, the vulgar craftsman and the slave –​were, for Aristotle, indicative of three types of political position, and so too, we shall see, for Arendt. Aristotle’s logic implies that the excellence of anything comes from it being an end in itself, and not a means to an end. While the “arts,” oriented to the product, are attentive to the act only as means (and hence an ugly action that produces a beautiful object is to be preferred to a noble action that produces nothing at all), the virtuous act is virtuous by nature of how it is done. In particular, it must be done deliberately yet with the graceful steadiness that comes from practice (NE 1105b; 1178a35). This sort of excellence, argued Aristotle, can be achieved only through habit (NE 1103a15; 1103a25). Action and politics All interesting, but what is the relevance for the issue of political action? Aristotle was always attentive to the necessary incompleteness of any formal deductive system (impressive, given that he was also basically the founder of logic as we know it) (Posterior Analytics 100b12). This had obvious implications for political life –​we cannot argue that the “laws” should be put above men, because the laws, as universal, cannot deal with particularities (Pol 1286a5). It is men who must determine how the laws are applied to any particularity, and this requires what Aristotle called “practical reason” [nous praktikos, later replaced with phronesis]. It is this practical sense that allows us to know what sort of situation we have, and to be able to apply the spirit of the law when the letter does not serve (Pol 1286a10; 1289a11; NE 1140a25-​31; 1144a1,9; Eudemian Ethics [EE] 1247a14). This sort of practical wisdom is only acquired through experience (though a free man can gain it by being ruled, and then learn how to rule others) (Pol 1277b). Those who think that legislation can be taught to others on the basis of a priori considerations (the examples Aristotle gives are only unnamed “sophists,” but Plato’s Socrates fits the bill) make themselves ridiculous. It is the actual political actors who are the experts, and they teach us through their action (NE 1180b30; 1181a1; 1181a15). In sum, it is not that we act “in order to” serve the collective good, for a city-​state itself exists for the purposes of making possible the noble act (Pol

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1281a5). Such action requires a sort of confident, practiced judgment, a practical wisdom, one that is “acquainted with the particulars: it is bound up with action, and action concerns the particulars” (NE 1141b15). Thus this sort of practical wisdom that comes from habit was tied to the graceful execution that comes from embodiment; it is notable that despite the fact that musicianship was associated with service, Aristotle still appealed to kithara-​playing as a fundamental metaphor for political action. This conception was largely lost; it is significant that by the time of Machiavelli (e.g., [1532] 1998, 100), “prudence” (which had been the Latin translation of phronesis) became associated not with habit but with its opposite, the capacity to change tack as the winds of fortune shifted. While this did denote a capacity to respond to the particularities of the situation, it has more connotations of dependence on the given, and less the confidence of the skilled master. This acceptance of the given informed the core notions of political action in sociology. Most famously, Weber had provided what seemed to be an exclusive and exhaustive partition of ethical ways of acting politically  –​one could either be oriented toward a valued goal, with one’s actions all only means to this goal, or the acts could be ends in themselves –​ but then one must renounce the project of politics and go off and play Saint Francis, for one was irresponsible ([1918] 1946). These conceptions of politics and action, Arendt believed, were ill thought out, and had led to dreadful consequences.

Arendt’s Projects Return to the Greeks and to Kant As Hannah Arendt was later to tell it, the word on the streets was that there was a young professor at Marburg who had reconnected with ancient tradition: “Thinking has come to life again; the cultural treasures of the past, believed to be dead, are being made to speak” (quoted in Young-​Bruehl 1982, 49). This was, of course, Martin Heidegger, and while Arendt clearly was influenced by her advisor, Karl Jaspers (taking from him not only the conviction that there could be a blending of Existenz philosophy and Kantianism, but also a penchant for working in triads), she was equally energized by Heidegger’s fresh approach to the ancients. (While her dissertation was on Augustine, this was a common choice for the new phenomenological thinkers, as his Confessions was a mine from which insights on the nature of temporality could be found.) Further, she thought that this need for a re-​appreciation of the Greek conceptions relevant for what became the keynote in a rich political philosophy, namely the loss of judgment she believed characteristic of twentieth-​century

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thought. The starkest evidence in support of such a charge was the rise of Nazism. Somehow, confronted with a choice that should have been clear, many Europeans (including Heidegger himself) went the wrong way. Interestingly, here Arendt did not turn to Aristotle and attempt to rework his ideas of choice or practical reason. Instead, she stuck with the fundamental partition of the faculties associated with Kant, and her final major project, The Life of the Mind, was to be a set of three works corresponding to the three main faculties Kant identified (thinking, willing and judging). Unfortunately, Arendt died before beginning the third volume (the title page being in her typewriter; while she had confidently forecasted a straightforward treatment, I  suspect that she would have found this task far more puzzling than she originally anticipated). Despite this focus on the Kantian faculty of judgment, often treated with suspicion by phenomenologists as representing the violent imposition of formal reasoning into the previously inviolate wholeness of experience4  –​ Arendt’s treatment was based in her understanding of classical Greek action. Discussing the case of Anton Schmidt, a German sergeant who, during the Holocaust, helped Jewish partisans (and not for money) for months before he was executed, Arendt strongly disagreed with those who argued (from a consequentialist perspective) that such resistances, as historically ineffectual, were meaningless (1964a, 232f). In opposition, she emphasized that “One man will always be left alive to tell the story.” The end of action, then, is not its consequence –​for the consequences of any action are unpredictable and all things are tangled. Rather, it is history (also 1951a, 59f).5 The subject This provides some of the context of The Human Condition (henceforward THC; all references are to this work unless otherwise noted), namely Arendt’s general attempt to rethink the basic categories by which we understand ourselves, and political action in particular. More specifically, the book actually began as an attempted engagement with the thought of Marx, itself a spin-​off from a previous desire to examine the Soviet system, given short shrift in her recently published Origins of Totalitarianism (Pitkin 1998, 98; also see 10, 16). Rather than grapple with Marx’s thought, Arendt ended up dealing with what she believed to be the underlying notions used by Marx and others. A word of caution:  Arendt’s method is the historical reanalysis of core concepts. Specialists do not always agree with her interpretations. Here I treat Arendt’s thinking in terms of its original contributions, and I make no attempt to weigh the accuracy of her claims when I repeat them. Further, like many creative intellectual historians (but unlike most social scientists), Arendt uses an analysis of developments in ideas to make strong implications as to

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broader, parallel changes in sociohistorical patterns, an assumption I will not question here. In any case, what is the human condition? In a way, it has been well understood from time immemorial –​it is mortality. This means that when we ask “what are the ends of your action?” and attempt, like Aristotle, to pursue this chain to its ultimate conclusion, the only real answer is death. (See, for example, her initial interpretation of Augustine [Arendt (1929) 1996,  13].) Yet Arendt was also considering the human condition circa 1958 –​a world of increasing technological rationality, scientific achievement, nuclear threat and uncertain politics. She hoped that by clarifying our understanding of the fundamental categories of the comprehension of human existence –​even, if necessary, by returning to Aristotle –​we could better understand the future and our capacity to control our own ends. “What I propose, therefore, is very simple:  it is nothing more than to think what we are doing” (5). But most important, what Arendt (9) means by “the human condition” is the capacity of human beings to condition themselves on a world that they transform. Our existence in the world –​if indeed we are to have a world –​is not independent of the nature of our activity. Here I only give a partial resume of THC, and do not follow its own presentation (and somewhat curious though effective organization), but rather emphasize what seem to be the most noteworthy points that she makes about the nature of action, the social, the political and science.

Action, Labor and Work What is action? The core of THC is –​characteristically for Arendt –​a trichotomy, three different ways of understanding human activity, which she calls the vita activa (the term used in medieval philosophy as the standard translation of the Aristotelian bios politikos). The three ways of understanding activity Arendt calls action, fabrication or work, and labor. Arendt sees these as temporally arranged in this order; the historical cut-​points between action and fabrication being marked with Plato, and that between fabrication and labor marked with Marx (12). Because Arendt’s understanding of action is quite different from that of most contemporary social thinkers, I first give attention to what she means by the term, and then explore the triadic structure.6 Arendt’s fundamental conception of action is the one we saw explicated by Aristotle, despite the fact that she is really pursuing earlier Greek conceptions. And this is because there is a way in which Aristotle’s conception of politics was “pre-​Socratic,” in that he shied away from some of the stronger aspects of the Socratic/​Platonic conception of the relation between the city-​state and

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the good, which, for Plato, is defined not by the polis but by reason itself, and which therefore pits a new construction of the “community” (as reached by the philosopher) against the notion of political action. The question is who is to be inside of whom –​the free man, or reason? Even more, as we shall see Arendt argue, Plato took as his core metaphor the model of fabrication, and not that of action. What is action? In Arendt’s understanding, it is paradigmatically speech; and the speech of speeches –​public declarations to influence others. While Arendt often uses the pairing of speech and deed, it is clear that the former is more fundamental, since speech without deed is still action, while the reverse is not true. And this is because action, whether verbal or not, is a kind of statement –​ specifically, it is an answer to the question “Who are you?” (178).7 To return: Aristotle considered three plausible forms of life available to the free –​self-​gratification, political action and philosophy (EE 1215a35; I.5; NE 1095b17; I.5; cf. Arendt THC 12f). Unlike Plato, who unequivocally saw only the life of contemplation as truly excellent (e.g., Republic, 500c), Aristotle seems to have had some difficulty banishing earlier ideas that it is the life of action that is highest for man, though he did eventually come around. Arendt implicitly sides with a pre-​Socratic understanding of the nature of action –​assumed by them, even if not by Arendt, to be the most excellent of the options  –​ though elaborating it in Aristotelian terms. In particular, she linked action to his use of energeia (actuality), for action is not merely a means to something else; indeed, true action leaves no completed work behind (206). This is of course an extreme vision (ideal typical, we might say), but understanding it is vital for reproducing Arendt’s thought. Action and consequences Arendt strongly endorses Aristotle’s conception that action is not about the ends, but the action itself. Indeed, Arendt is convinced that there is something fundamentally insane about means-​end thinking; for one thing, she believes that it logically implies not only that “the” end justifies the means, but also that this in turn implies that anything is acceptable (229).8 Such thinking not only tends toward irresponsible extremism, but is laughable given the actual complexity of the results of action. “The process of a single deed can quite literally endure throughout time until mankind itself has come to an end” (233). Arendt does not deny that action is oriented to accomplishing things. But she sees this as somewhat different from the idea of calculable consequences, since action, unlike work, lacks a predictable end making such consequentialism plausible; we are too dependent on the responses of others (144). Hence

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action’s excellence is separable from its outcome. Consider Pericles making his celebrated funeral oration to the Athenians. It was intended to strengthen the resolve of the listeners to pursue their war with Sparta (as well as to honor the dead). Suppose that Pericles calculated that he would actually better inspire the audience if he was inarticulate, or, indeed, if he displayed cowardice himself, provoking his audience to angrily determine to show him true courage. Such thinking would be completely foreign to the Greek idea of virtue and excellence.9 Action not only transcends determination by ends, but it also, unlike regular behavior, transcends conventional moral standards (which does not mean that it is free from any standards). This is because, Arendt insists, to the Greeks political action is by definition extraordinary (205); as each act is unique, it (like an artwork in later aesthetics) must bring within it its own standards of evaluation.10 For Arendt, the uniqueness of action is key –​action is a start, the beginning of something new. Our running toward death would carry everything human to destruction and ruin “if it were not for the faculty of interrupting it and beginning something new, a faculty which is inherent in action like an ever-​ present reminder that men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin” (246). Indeed, Arendt (189) emphasizes that both in Greek and in Latin there were originally two words for what we might now call action, one for initiating (archein/​agere) and another for completing (prattein/​gerere). In both cases, the former became assimilated to political rule and the latter became the more generic term for action. As it is the former that is characteristic of free men (Arendt 1951a, 166f), any political subjection forces its expropriation from the subject. Thus although Arendt follows later thought and uses praxis (from prattein) to indicate this meaning of action, her core vision turns more on this earlier conception of archein, as her conception is fundamentally a set of political equals confronting one another in an assembly. The division In contrast to this conception of action, Arendt (7)  adumbrates two other modes of activity often confused with one another, namely labor and work. Indeed, THC is important for sociologists if only for her clear separation of these two; though few preceding authors had made this a focus, “against this scarcity of historical evidence” for her claims, she points to the “fact that every European language, ancient and modern, contains two etymologically unrelated words for what we have come to think of as the same activity, and retains them in the face of their persistent synonymous usage” (80).

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How can we distinguish the two? “Labor never refers to the finished product, but remains a verbal noun to be classed with the gerund, whereas the product itself is invariably derived from the word for work,” even when the verb form for work has become obsolete (80). In other words, labor emphasizes the bodily activity itself. Work, oriented to the outcome as opposed to the process, sees the activity as a means to an end, and using work as the template for human activity brings with it the dominance of means-​ends thinking (143). To Arendt, these three forms of activity tend to correspond to three different products: labor, to perishables (for example, flour); work, to durables (especially means of production);11 and action, to speech. Further, there is a temporal gradient paralleling these: labor is involved in the continual reproduction of life –​ once done, it is immediately required again, leading to a general sense of futility, for the process of rebuilding the decaying body anew is like attempting to sweep away the sand from a beach (100). Labor’s temporal orientation is therefore cyclical, as it is oriented to replenishing the body’s needs, while work’s is linear –​ the accomplishment of a goal through production. For this reason, work has a separation (if also a unification) of plan and execution. Significantly, there are no work songs, only labor songs –​craftsmen sing after work, not during it (145n8). The laborer prefers repetitive labor because it requires no mental attention and allows for the compensation of mental freedom; the absentminded worker, in contrast, is a bad worker. On the other extreme, the great deed or the great speech is “immortal.” By this, Arendt means two things: first, she appeals to the ancient Greeks’ sense that their actions could be immortal. But more important, this immortality is related to the capacity of humans to have a world. Arendt begins from the presumption that each of us, qua body, is “subjective” in the sense not of being a subject, but rather in having a solipsistic orientation to experience, akin to the theories of infantile oceanic egocosmism. It is connection with stable things outside ourselves, whether these are things or persons, that leads to objectivity. One of the many important things about the existence of a public sphere is that it is a realm of objectivity, transforming the lives of participants from being the “parallel play” of herd sociality to true objectivity. The public world is where one is exposed to multiple perspectives; only here, then, does one get “reality” (57). Of course, the public sphere is not the only possible source of a world; we may use things instead of persons. Human life is “engaged in a constant process of reification,” but to the extent that these things have true worldliness –​ that these things can be situated in a shared substrate for coherent and objective experience –​they must transcend our own time horizons (96), and only a stable and durable object can “stand against” us as an object (Gegenstand). And only thus can we, who make the world that conditions us, have that world be an objective one (in a sense that Simmel would also endorse) (137).

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Thus both action and work help produce a world. But labor is inherently subjective, because it is fundamentally about the body –​one works with one’s hands, but labors with one’s body (and one acts with speech) (118). A collection of people all laboring to meet each day’s needs would be a set of parallel subjectivities, lacking any fixed reference points to anchor the meeting of the minds (136). It is with action that we insert ourselves in the human world, just as with fabrication we enter into relation with the natural world (and, in laboring, into a relation only with our own body) (176).12 The outlines of this scheme are given in Table 2.1. Such a conceptual clarification is, I believe, interesting and significant in itself. But Arendt believed, first, that this schema corresponded to a temporal ordering; a change in emphasis that flows down the chart. I will sidestep an evaluation of this claim, though later I return to the key question of the society oriented to labor that Arendt saw as characterizing the twentieth century. Arendt also believed that this adumbration had strong implications for the nature of what we might consider to be the realms of the social and the political –​whether these are even understood as such, whether they are imagined to be coterminous and whether one has primacy over the other. I wish to begin with this narrower, but more fruitful, question.

The Social and the Political The social versus the political What might be most challenging for the sociologist to accept is Arendt’s steadfast rejection of the “social” as an intrinsic dimension of human life.13 Indeed, she finds it a fundamentally distasteful and degrading one. It is, argues Arendt (23), significant that the word “social” is Roman in origin; there is no Greek equivalent. To Plato and Aristotle, there was nothing of human significance in the fact that people necessarily live among others; this is also true of animals (24). What was distinctly human, for the Greeks, was the capacity for a life as a citizen, the bios politikos. And, as Aristotle emphasized, this meant specifically action (praxis) and speech (lexis) (25). While the polis was, of course, the city-​state, to Arendt, it connotes the public sphere in which citizens would debate; she tends to associate it with an open place in which all may be seen by all (like an agora; though this brings with it certain problems for Arendt [here see Walsh 2015, 24]). It is only here that, to the Greeks, one could be an individual, for only in the public realm would one show who he really is, most notably by surpassing others (41). Finally, the bios politikos is what happens outside the household (oikos), which is an engine for the local production necessary to satisfy wants (33). The difficulty for sociologists discussing Arendt is that we will consistently want to use the word social to describe action, as it is oriented to interpersonal

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Table 2.1  Arendt’s scheme Activity

Done with

Product

Temporality

Objectivity

Structure

Relation with

Action

Speech

Deeds and Speeches

Immortal

Objective, worldly

End in itself

Others (You)

Work

Hands

Tools

Plato Lasting

Means to end

Material world (It)

Labor

Body

Necessaries, consumables

Marx Instantaneous, circular

Cycle

Self –​ trapped in body (I)

Subjective, isolated

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relations. And this is because we use the word social in two senses that are –​at least potentially –​associated with contradictory understandings. One understanding is that the realm of the social is that which belongs to society; this is (in the French context) a Durkheimian interpretation, one that sees there as being a whole of which the individuals are parts. In this sense, the political is resolutely opposed to the social, for reasons that Latour (especially 1999) has made clear.14 Starting with Plato, the conception of the whole is used to delegitimate the freedom of political actors, insisting that there is always a “correct” answer to political questions, and that this answer can be reached only by a new type of thinker with access to a new realm of invisible objects of knowledge beyond the reach of the “man of action,” who is now demoted to the hoi polloi. The other understanding of social is that which belongs to the interpersonal; this would be (in the French context) the Tardean interpretation. Here there is no contradiction between the social and the political; the two are the same thing, for, as Tarde emphasized, the interpersonal is the realm of influence, of lines of force proceeding from each and connecting all together in a web. Here there is no supervening realm that can be taken for granted as sui generis. Rather, the trans-​personal is, at heart, an individual creation, and indeed, this is the key to understanding political action. I will follow Arendt and use “the social” for the first, and use “interpersonal” to refer to the second. This distinction allows us to free ourselves from the common assumption that “politics,” like “the economy,” is a subset of “the social,” simply because it is interpersonal. Historically, both the political realm and the economic realm were recognized long before “the social”; only at the turn of the nineteenth century does this more encompassing understanding of a lawful object of study emerge, and it is increasingly associated with notions of the mass, of statistical regularity and of determination. Formulaically, we can say that, to Arendt, the political was something that can be envisioned as a realm in front of us and between us, as we form a circle of interactants. The social, on the other hand, is behind us and encompassing us, moving us about. One of the most intriguing ambiguities in Arendt’s writing is that it is not clear when she thinks of this “social” as an existing organizational structure possessed of causal powers, and when it is a lens through which humans understand aspects of their lives that may not do justice to their actual capacities. It is, however, certain that Arendt believes that the social has gained ground in both senses (also see 1959a, 53). Further, the growth of the social has come at the expense of the political. Political action This brings us to the aspect of Arendt’s work that may be most interesting for the contemporary sociologist, given that our discipline has really lost almost

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any notion of politics at all. (Our sister science of political science, in its own folly, has nearly replaced this entirely with choice, which is perhaps even worse.) Arendt gives us a rich sense of the relational nature of political action. It is not simply that “(political) action is interpersonal” in the way a Weberian would imagine (it is oriented to the likely behavior of others). Rather, political action creates relations. And this is why the political is the realm of action par excellence; because what we call “politics” is when actors orient themselves to sides. Contrary to Weber’s definition, in which politics “means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power” ([1918] 1946, 78), Arendt’s implicit view is that politics is paradigmatically about convincing others to ally with one. Weber’s approach to politics never shook the Bismarkianism that so molded his generation; you will note that his definition agrees with Clausewitz that war is a subset of politics. In contrast, for Arendt, politics is fundamentally about the existence of a public sphere, and where this has collapsed, there simply are no politics at all (also p. 58).15 Further, Arendt has a more sophisticated notion of power than Weber’s typically brutalist idea that it is simply about getting one’s way over the opposition of another. Power, in Arendt’s eyes, is a potential; it is, she writes (200), the sort of thing that “springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.”16 Indeed, she emphasizes that we must take seriously the etymological relationship between “might” and “might” –​it is the open-​endedness of the possibility that produces power. Power exists in the ensemble of relations, not the muscle of the individual (a notion reemphasized by systems theorists like Parsons and Luhmann). Thus political action is not so much a species of the genus action as its paradigm; it is inherent in politics that it involve the making of novel relations, and there is no action that does not take place in, and orient itself to, a public sphere. Where it exists, this sort of action is not merely “new” in the sense explored earlier; it is necessarily creative and critical in its relation to the rest of the social. Rather than action being the motion of parts of the body social, each neatly arranged in its own nested set of groups (perhaps akin to social organs), action has an inherent tendency to cross boundaries, to connect differences and, in general, to complicate things. The body politic may be set up with attempted boundaries and fences, but action repeatedly cuts across these and brings unpredictability with it (190f). To cite the wise words of Allan Silver, “politics is strange bedfellows.”17 Freedom and influence As Barry Barnes has said, though it may seem paradoxical, one of the ways that we can determine that an action is free is to see if we can imagine the actor being convinced to do otherwise (2000, 34, 71). So, too, Arendt believed that

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the essence of politics (at least in this Greek conception) is freedom, and freedom in turn is a fundamentally political (and not, say, scientific) concept (1951a, 146ff). Yet politics is about convincing others, and convincing other free people.18 It is thus a set of relations between (the masters of) households. Think how different was Plato’s conception of how a city-​state should be governed –​taking as his template for governmental relations the intra-​household relation of master-​slave, Plato was in effect declaring that action should have no part in public affairs (224). Indeed, his very emphasis on the notion of form (eidos) betrays that he was attempting to replace action with making (poiesis), since it is (as Plato [Rep 601c-​d] notes) the craftsman who has a mental understanding of the form of what he is to make. (Thus Arendt sees Plato as initiating the regime of human activity as fabrication as opposed to action, one that comes to an end with Marx and the centrality of labor.) It is the potential for the separation of planning and execution inherent in fabrication (225) that allowed Plato his foot in the door; from there, he attempted to completely separate these, giving planning to one set of persons and execution to another.19 In contrast, Arendt (220) argued that politics is fundamentally about plurality –​and any attempt to do away with plurality, no matter in what name this is conducted, is an attempt to do away with the public realm and to destroy politics. And this is what has almost happened. Although Arendt does not attempt to pinpoint a dominant influence or transition point, it is clear that by the time of the early Christian church, there had been a reversal of the ideational structure used to understand action, whereby what had been outside became seen as internal, and what had been internal became external. Regarding the latter, the very notion of “society” (a “commonwealth,” as it was termed a bit earlier) is one that considers issues once defined as wholly private –​those of how the oikos must meet its needs –​now to be public; the very notion of a science of “political economy” would have seemed contradictory to those who first formulated the notion of a polis. On the other hand, the Christian idea of goodness is incompatible with publicity; no one is truly good if his action is done to be seen (74). Of course, Christianity promised something else. But to understand the nature of this promise, we must backtrack, and explore Arendt’s somewhat pessimistic understanding of human existence.

History and Life The futility of life It is important to understand how deep is Arendt’s rejection of the conventional neo-​Kantian understanding of means and ends, which she reduces –​ perhaps unjustifiably –​to utilitarianism (154). Like Aristotle, she allows that

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there may be chains of means and ends, but she finds the idea that there is a justifiable terminal end ridiculous. What is the use of happiness? What is the use of use? To her, these questions obviously imply the weakness of any resolution based on a regress of “in order to.” (In contrast, she sees in her conception of action a “for the sake of ” that is not of the “in order to” form; this is somewhat like Weber’s [1978] distinction between value rational and instrumentally rational action.) The devaluation implicit in treating one thing as merely a means to another spreads like contagion throughout the whole chain of conditionality, leaving the world fundamentally degraded and meaningless (156f). (Note that since it is work that is paradigmatically associated with such means-​ends orientation, Arendt does not see salvation for humanity in a return to the work ethic.) The alternative inherent in the philosophy of life –​perhaps most clearly expressed by Schopenhauer –​is that there is no “why” question to be asked about life. Such questioning is allowing the tail of consciousness to try to wag the dog of life. Life lives, and that is that. This eternal circularity of life, which Arendt associates with labor, seems unsatisfying to her, given that we are creatures that can think with intellect, can reason with one another in speeches and can, occasionally, do great deeds. But to do these we need particular organizations of interpersonal life, in both space and in time. Otherwise, while we may be alive, we do not have “a” life. Arendt (97) made a distinction between life in the biological and biographical senses, using the Greek terms zoē and bios. The latter is a linear space between a birth and death, which corresponds to action, as opposed to the mere life of circular labor. Without ignoring the appeals of the philosophy of life, when push comes to shove, she finds it merely making the best of a bad situation –​our mortality, an undoing of all we are and have done, and a return to dust. But there is, she thinks, another option. The polis and history The significance of the polis to the Greeks, wrote Arendt, is that it is that interpersonal formation that allows one’s actions and speeches to be remembered (197f; cf. Aristotle Pol 1281a5). It is a place where we appear to one another, and where appearance and reality by definition coincide, for we are our public actions.20 Yet it is not simply that the Greeks wanted to be esteemed by their peers. They wanted to be immortal. For the Greeks, public life was a guarantee against the futility of individual life, where there was no permanence (and no “objectivity” in Arendt’s sense) (56). Of course, the permanence comes only with memory, and hence, it is history (even if only in the informal sense of stories being retold) that leads to

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this preservation of what is most important in our lives. The Greek idea of eudaimonia, sometimes translated “blessed happiness,” was something quite different from either or both of these (happiness or blessedness); rather, it meant “to have lived well,” and to say that only the dead have eudaimonia is not to curse life, but to say that, because of the unpredictability of the results and indeed nature of action, it is something we can only comprehend retrospectively. Thus we need the historian to tell the story to let us know what we have done (192).21 But knowing that there will be history gives the actor a shot at immortality. Or, that is how it was, until Plato, who claimed that what he called ideas were unchanging and that this gave him a superiority over the man of action. As Arendt (20) says, this was the beginning of a commitment of Western philosophy to hoist the eternal over the immortal. But of even greater concern to her in the modern world is the rise of a focus on labor that has no temporal extension whatsoever. Rise of animal laborans For Arendt, the culmination of the book is her critique of current society as the complete victory of the valorization of labor, and the rise of what she calls “animal laborans” (in a different genus than homo faber) as the archetypal active human in it. As might be expected with a critique of “society nowadays,” this portion has not aged well. The connections she makes vary from the brilliant to the implausible, and she seems to throw a number of things in higgledy-​ piggledy that do not obviously belong together. For this reason, I will go briefly over her argument here. Her critique of the valorization of labor, which was ushered in by socialism, is only the beginning of her argument; further, it is not intended as a rude dismissal of Marx’s own work, which she considered important and impressive.22 Still, as I  will return to in the conclusion, she does not seem to accept that Marx might have a totally different approach to human activity, one that stems from the Hegelian dialectic of externalization, and one that might not fit her scheme. In any case, what is the problem with the labor-​oriented society? Arendt (5) sometimes makes it seem like the problem is merely that mechanization promises to make us a society of people who believe only in labor –​and don’t have to. But this is only scratching the surface of the problem. First, she makes the non-​obvious claim that mechanization has undermined work, not simply by actually replacing the workman with the laborer, but, more important, by changing the focus of thought from product to process;23 this change in scientific understanding parallels or indicates a corresponding change in social and economic organization. Despite the connection of this process with action

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(given the exaltation of current activity over product), she sees it as closer to the instantaneousness of labor. Further, the products of this mechanized process, even though they are technically durable, become understood as consumables (124).24 This leads (or perhaps is led by?) a general decline of the values of the workman’s world –​durability, stability –​and a rise in those of the laborer’s –​ abundance. Abundance may well be a worthy goal, but it is one that does nothing about the fundamental futility of the life process (126, 131). Thus while the products of work had promised to give mortals “a dwelling place more permanent and more stable than themselves,” our mechanized production fails to accomplish this (152). Most worrisome in the rise of animal laborans is the fact that it implies (to Arendt) that there can be no public sphere; mere labor does not, we recall, induce objectivity. Rather than true publicity, a society of laborers has “only private activities displayed in the open” (134). Further, with the assumption that life is obviously the highest good (312ff), a fundamentally Christian idea but now divorced from the belief in personal immortality, we find ourselves with one-​half of the Christian reversal of ancient priorities. To the Greeks, man but not the world was mortal, and hence the way to achieve immortality was to act on the world. To the Christian, it is the world that is mortal, and the individual soul immortal –​which of course devalues political action. But with the shift to animal laborans, we do not even understand ourselves as acting at all. Perhaps the most interesting part of Arendt’s critique is her implicit attack on social science, and her vision of science more properly understood.

Science and Behavior Man and himself Arendt in no way questions the remarkable advances the sciences have made. Yet she is completely unmoved, because she takes these to imply not that “we now know” what the world is really like, but rather, that we have learned to impose our own subjective nature on the world itself (287). To her, the pivotal moment in the history of science was marked by the discoveries of Galileo, which gave us a new way of understanding the earth and our place on it. Strangely enough, this subjection of the once-​celestial spheres to visual observation coincided with a resignation of any hope of having direct understanding of the world via our senses (262). The implication is that we have renounced any capacity to think in universal or absolute terms  –​even as we gained the capacity to act universally (270). This universal skepticism has had two corollaries. The first has been to further boost the role of making, and to subordinate thinking to this end.

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“Theory became hypothesis, and the success of the hypothesis became truth”; reasoning devolved to “reckoning,” the calculation of consequences (278, 284). And, of course, this type of thinking is singularly unable to deal with whatever action that does remain, because it becomes helpless and directionless in situations in which it has no hope of determining consequences. But such situations are inherent to action and its results, “where nothing happens more frequently than the totally unexpected” (300). The second corollary is that our instrumental success may, in a way, isolate us even more from the world. With the new physics we find that instead of getting at the objective qualities of nature, “in the words of Heisenberg –​man encounters only himself ” (261). Our capacity to mathematize does not demonstrate that God is a mathematician, but that we can turn the entire world into patterns that “are identical with human, mental structures,” the same ones we use to design our instruments and to set up experimental conditions to which we subject nature (266, 286).25 We finally find, in words she takes from Descartes, that our mind, though not the measure of truth, is indeed “the measure of things that we affirm or deny” (279). For this reason we cannot, Arendt believes, shake the fear that we live in a dream world where everything we dream with our science assumes the character of reality only for as long as the dream lasts. Thus Arendt’s conception of this epistemic condition is perhaps more plausible than Weber’s ([1915] 1946; [1919] 1946) notion of disenchantment; science is associated with an increasing meaninglessness not simply because it ignores meaning, but because it is the acme of the instrumental orientation, in which everything is a means to something else. (Further, her take may be less grandiose, paradoxical and sulky than that of her Frankfurt school rivals.) This regress is not solved by putting anything at the end –​not even Man himself, as Kant proposed with his notion of a “realm of ends” ([1785] 1938). It is inherent in the human condition that we make our world, but when we make ourselves the measure of all things, we lack any capacity for growth, transcendence or greatness (159). And the social sciences only further this limitation of the human condition. Sociology Arendt’s hostility to social science in general, and sociology in particular, is well known (see Baehr 2010b, 19, 45, 52, 56; Walsh 2015, 43). Perhaps the core of this is that she believed that sociology was not only a generalizing science that was unable to grapple with action, but one that tended to sap humans of their capacity for action and judgment. Given how complacently convinced we are that the “individual” is a recent, bourgeois European

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phenomenon, sociologists are perhaps blind to how they assume a genericness to human nature. It seems obvious to us that knowing what class, role or type a person is gives us nearly all we need to know about him or her. This genericness may be no less historically specific than individuality.26 Yet we convince ourselves that the individualism of the Greeks  –​a key prerequisite of true action –​is an impossibility. Scientists, wrote Arendt, “move in a world where speech has lost its power” (4); to go on and apply this same scientific understanding to ourselves is fundamentally destructive. Social science seems to be based on doctrines that imply the further degradation of our capacity to act. Behaviorism is the most shocking and flagrant form of this reduction of action to mere life processes. Yet “the trouble with modern theories of behaviorism is not that they are wrong but that they could become true, that they actually are the best possible conceptualization of certain obvious trends in modern society” (322, 45).27 Equally corrosive is the increasingly widespread use of statistics in the study of human action. As we all know, these statistics depend on “the law of large numbers.” “Yet the meaningfulness of everyday relationships is disclosed not in everyday life but in rare deeds. … The application of the law of large numbers and long periods to politics or history signifies nothing less than the wilful obliteration of their very subject matter” (42). Arendt does not deny that increasing the size of collective bodies implies the submergence of the political in the social, and the decreasing capacity of action to “stem the tide of behavior” –​the large-​scale motions of the aggregate that could be predicted by science (43). But social scientists certainly do not help matters when (like Quetelet and Durkheim) they suggest that the average equals the normal equals the ethical (this was a common German critique of the French school, and is implicit in Arendt’s take). In all these sociological approaches, we treat human activity as something caused by external phenomena; the actor becomes a patient, all is determined, we could do no other. It is this abandonment of the belief in human freedom that Arendt sees as connected to the failure of judgment that is perhaps her central indictment of the twentieth century. How can we judge someone who is driven by laws of necessity? (also see Arendt [1964c] 2003, 18f, 27). And if we cannot judge someone else’s past errors, how are we likely to be able to make correct judgments ourselves, “when the chips are down”? Any field of study that further degrades these already weakened faculties is an intellectual and an ethical abomination. It is quite true that in social science, just as with natural science, we have indeed been able to choose an Archimedean point considerably outside our own experience. Yet this leads us to a deep misunderstanding of our own capacities. We treat our own actions simply as if they were “process,” and see our greatest accomplishments in the

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same terms we would use to describe the blind mutation of some organism (322). Looking at ourselves sub specie universitatis, we seem to ourselves to be ants. Thinking in a time scale that dwarfs that of the ancient Greeks, we would never entertain the absurd belief that our acts will live forever. And so we act like the ants we think we are.28

Conclusion Arendt has been important for many fields; for sociology, her great contribution is her capacity to reopen our concepts, and to see what routes were passed up as we settled into one way of parsing human life. Further, while not all of her historical claims bear weight, she has a remarkable capacity at helping the non-​expert understand some long-​past ways of seeing. On her home territory –​political judgment and the ways in which we understand this –​she is unsurpassed, and this means that she can teach us much about the nature of politics. At the same time, there seems to be something strange and sad about her conviction –​at least in THC and in other works of the 1950s –​that politics is or should be the be all and end all of human activity and that she knowingly and deliberately takes her conceptual apparatus from a slave society in which almost all actual activity was forcibly delegated to others, and ceased to be of concern to the masters. As Arendt knew, her three categories –​action, work and labor –​correspond to the three great classes of the Greek polis as considered by Aristotle –​the free masters, the “vulgar craftsmen” and the slaves. Arendt was no fool nor an apologist, but she did not worry that her concepts were too mixed up with these class relations for them to be applicable to a world of the universal franchise.29 And this is because Arendt here remains within the opposition most powerfully structured by Kant ([1785] 1938) –​do we think of ourselves as actors, in a “practical anthropology,” or do we see ourselves as things, subject to the general approach of “physics”? In THC, Arendt maps these onto the realms of “the political” and “the social,” respectively. Despite the great influence over her by the Existenz philosophers, who owed so much to the Lebensphilosophie of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Simmel, Arendt found no inspiration in the generic, animal zoē: it was the individual bios, the story, that she found compelling (and believed herself in accord with the Greeks here). In part for this reason, the vitalist aspects of our understanding of labor –​ key for any serious engagement with Marx –​were largely lost on her. Thus while THC arose as an attempt to grapple with Marx’s thought, it appears that he slipped away. The attempt to reduce Marx’s understanding of labor

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to the dumb, animal repetition of a treadmill is painful in its falsity. Was he right or was he wrong, Marx saw labor as, in potentia, combining the sociality Arendt confined to action and the externalization she saw in fabrication.30 Further, her insistence that fabrication necessarily elevates the made over the making is taken not from any firsthand experience of craftsmanship, but from the writings of Aristotle who, as a master, probably had no concrete sense of production, and only became interested in it to the extent that it delivered a product to him for his own use (cf. Plato [Rep 601c-​d]). Interestingly, Arendt (242) inadvertently reverts to a classic vitalist/​dialectical image in her analysis of love, where she says that the only happy ending of a love affair is the birth of a child. Whether this is true is less interesting than her belated linking of this form of labor with life and love.31 This notion of creative production, though not the only one in the Western tradition (Joas 1996), does not fit into her division. It has the fundamental connection of life, circularity and bodily pain of her labor, the productivity and care of her work and the sociality and, indeed, immortality of her action. Yet, unlike her action, it is not based on antagonistic social relations that exclude want satisfaction as servile and fit only to be hidden, nor does it even have an intrinsically agonistic aspect. While Arendt’s work always has a satisfyingly violent relation to nature (140), involving the imposition of the maker’s will over the material, in this sort of production, the product, to use Giordano Bruno’s ([1584] 1998, 80)  words, “does not receive dimensions from without, but sends them out and brings them forth as from its womb.” If, as I believe, this is the root of the conception of labor held by Hegel and Marx, it may perhaps suggest the need for a rethinking of the rethinking offered in The Human Condition.

Notes 1 Further, I think that this transition is to some degree seen in Bourdieu himself; frequent references to the “body” obscured his increasing rationalism as he reached for a totalistic system, something fundamentally incompatible with the core assumptions of his approach. 2 For Aristotle references, I  use the Chicago (Bartlett and Collins) translation for the Nicomachean Ethics, the Hackett (Reeves) translation for the Politics, and the Loeb (Tredennick) translation for the Posterior Analytics; for other works, I use McKeon’s Basic Works. For Plato’s Republic, I use the Basic (Bloom) edition. References are made using the Bekker system for Aristotle and the Stephanus for Plato. 3 This seems to be literally true; what we consider Aristotle’s Ethics and his Politics appear originally to have been a single work, only divided much later. 4 It was common for Germans to emphasize that judging –​Urteilung –​represented the primordial severing (Ur-​Teilung), a point famously made by Hölderlin.

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5 And by history, Arendt meant this telling of significant stories. This was how humans coped with the unforeseeable consequences and irreversibility of action; such tales are an attempt to reshape the past. It is, I believe, significant that when it comes to specifying just what it is these legends are to fit, Arendt uses the phrase “the human condition” –​and then adds, “and political aspirations in particular.” 6 Interestingly, Arendt here attempted to handle changes in the understanding of activity with almost no attention to changes in the understanding of the will, which was to occupy the second volume of her Life of the Mind. There, she (1978a; also 1951a, 157) made the strong claim that there was a fundamental shift in the understanding of this faculty with Augustine, and that previous ideas seemingly comparable with our post-​Augustinian understanding were in fact fundamentally different. 7 The original Greek conception of the hero is simply someone who answers this question and is willing to suffer the consequences –​“Courage and even boldness are already present in leaving one’s private hiding place and showing who one is, in disclosing and exposing one’s self ” (186). Perhaps it is the influence of Heidegger that makes Arendt assume that this form of answering comes only in this disclosure, while she does not recognize that Marx conceives of the process of work as a different form of an answer. I return to this issue in closing. 8 It seems that, somewhat like the irresponsible zealots discussed by Weber ([1918] 1946), Arendt assumes that there is only a single end worthy of consideration. 9 That does not mean that such calculative behavior was never seen as demonstrating a sort of excellence; when (in Angels with Dirty Faces) the toughened gangster played by Jimmy Cagney allows himself to be convinced to “go yellow to the chair,” abnegating his last claim to worth in order to break the hold he has on youth who idolize him and who may follow his footsteps, he certainly has a sort of virtue. But it is, as Arendt would emphasize, a particularly Christian virtue that comes from self-​transcendence, and not self-​actualization. 10 This conception of action reappears in Machiavelli’s ([1531] 1998, 63) admission that had Gian Paolo Baglioni slaughtered the pope when the latter, quite impressively, came unarmed into Baglioni’s citadel to oppose him, this would have been an astounding (because unprecedented) action –​no condemnation of treachery is attached. And, of course, this valorization of action was to reappear in Italy in the early twentieth century, associated with the Fascist movement. 11 Her distinction between labor and work (94) thereby also tends to parallel Marx’s between Department I and Department II (Marx [1885] 1909). 12 Thus, like Simmel (and like her admirer Habermas), Arendt links her triadic structure to that of the three grammatical persons; while some now see this as intrinsic to the overriding scheme of German idealism, this is not quite so, though it is reasonable to see the origins in Schelling; C. S. Peirce developed a similar scheme under Schelling’s influence. 13 Pitkin points out that this wholesale rejection of the social may have been an aberration in Arendt’s thought more generally (1998, 203). Within a few years, it seems that she rethought the issue; indeed, quite soon after THC Arendt (1959a, 55) emphasized a somewhat different distinction between three realms: the political, the social and the private. This does not map onto the conceptual structure of THC, and here, I consider only that approach. 14 As Latour (2005, 250) puts it, “If there is a society, then no politics is possible.”

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15 Arendt (202f) credits Montesquieu with being “the only one, as far as I know” to understand that the key problem with tyranny is that it rests on isolation –​of tyrant from the people and the people from one another. Tyranny is thus not one form of government among others, but is negation of the very thing, substituting violence for power. This was, however, explicitly argued by Aristotle! (Pol 1314a20). 16 This is pleasingly analogous to an electrical potential that arises where surfaces with different charges are juxtaposed; Arendt herself does not employ this metaphor. 17 See Kopelowitz and Diamond (1998, 671). 18 For that reason it has formal similarities to judgments of aesthetics (1951a, 221ff); while a proper discussion exceeds the limitations of this work, I find Arendt’s repeated suggestions that a science of human action should have formal parallels to aesthetics the most interesting part of her work. 19 But to be fair, Plato argued that the master who has ordered and will use the product has a better grasp of form than the maker himself. 20 For Arendt (173), aesthetics is about the visible, even superficial qualities of objects, and she unashamedly returns to Plato’s idea of forms to explain why one table is more beautiful than another, equally functional table. Here again we see the correspondence of her ideas of aesthetics and her ideas of action. 21 I believe that this contradicts Arendt’s more pivotal point about the nature of action, as it implies a more consequentialist “reckoning,” nor does it fit the most straightforward interpretation of Greek ideas, but this is an issue best left to experts. Arendt (173) also suggests that work of a certain kind may also be needed to support the immortality of the actor, namely artwork. Physical artworks are for her the acme of production, because they are the most lasting; not made for use, they are not depreciated in the same way as are other goods. They are thus the most durable of the durables. 22 Arendt (79) expressed some regret at having to weigh in against Marx, given that her day saw so many turncoats –​one-​time-​Marxists daring to trash a great thinker for their own petty advancement. 23 For Arendt, this is associated with the loss of any valorization of contemplation and its replacement by “thinking” in terms of a means-​to-​an end of production (291f, 301, 307). “In the place of the concept of Being we now find the concept of Process” (296). 24 This is a more subtle version of the “consumption society” thesis –​arguing that “now” it turns out to be the very durability of products that is the greatest impediment to turnover process and hence wealth (253). Since durability is always (by definition) an impediment to the turnover process, it seems that she (like others) is taking the fact that this process was only theorized to be vital for wealth in the nineteenth century and made a production goal in the twentieth to signify some sort of more logical change in the nature of wealth, which I do not understand. 25 Arendt seems to contradict this view when she emphasizes that new ideas of the universe are ones we can’t even think (288), but I take her point to be that although we can’t integrate these notions into a whole open to our intuitive contemplation, and can carry out only cognitive operations on them, these operations are ones that correspond to the nature of what our minds are good at. 26 For example, Hallpike (1977, 81) argued that the Taude of New Guinea had no clear sense of stereotypes associated with proper roles, and instead were oriented to the particular characteristics of each individual.

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27 Pitkin (1998, 198ff) notes that Arendt cleverly evades the issue of whether such social scientific approaches, with their predictions and implicit constraint, are actually fundamentally flawed, or only imperfect. If the latter, her critique loses a great deal of its power. 28 Perhaps the best example of this approach is that of Luhmann, who refuses to attempt to incorporate the human and heroic understandings of action in his systems theory; it is interesting that while Arendt argued that we had lost the Greek understanding of politics, Luhmann (1990, 32)  believed that we had not yet sufficiently purged our notion of politics of residues from Greece! “We tend to forget,” he wrote drily, “that since then, much has changed” (2000, 7). This was in as much as to say that Luhmann proposed a political system bereft of politics (though see 2000, 94). 29 Arendt (208) works out the conceptions of the greatest of our achievements for each of the three species of activity: for the actor it is one’s own actualization, for homo faber there is the conception that “a man’s products can be more … than he is himself,” and of course there is animal laborans’ belief that “life is the highest of all goods.” She seems quite sympathetic to the actor’s idea –​common to all nobilities –​that only the vulgar would get their pride from what they have done, as opposed to what they are (211). While a conservative like Oakeshott may recognize the aspects of embodiment worthy of appreciation and valorization, perhaps missed by the social critic (Bourdieu [1979] 1984), the reverse is also true, and Arendt seems to miss one half of an inherently relational conception. 30 Marx preserved an analytic distinction between social labor and individual labor, and saw the potential for true creativity and self-​realization only in the former. 31 Pitkin (1998,166–​169) I believe errs in thinking that Arendt must see animal laborans as feminine. Pitkin’s reasoning here is that because some of Arendt’s predicates for animal laborans are gendered feminine by others, this may be taken to apply to her own thought, which seems very shaky to me.

References Arendt, Hannah. (1929) 1996. Love and Saint Augustine, edited by Joanna Vercchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 1951a. Between Past and Future:  Six Exercises in Political Thought. Cleveland, OH: Meridian Books —​—​—​. (1951e) 2004. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books. —​—​—​. 1958a. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 1959a. “Reflections on Little Rock.” Dissent 6: 45–​56. —​—​—​. 1964a. Eichmann in Jerusalem, revised and enlarged. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. —​—​—​. (1964c) 2003. “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship.” In Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn, 17–​48. New York: Schocken Books. —​—​—​. 1977. The Life of the Mind. Volume I:  Thinking. New  York:  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. —​—​—​. 1978a. The Life of the Mind. Volume II: Willing. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. —​—​—​. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon. New  York: Random House.

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—​—​—​. 1960. Posterior Analytics, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Loeb Aristotle, Volume II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —​—​—​. 1998. Politics, translated by C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. —​—​—​. 2011. Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baehr, Peter. 2010b. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Barnes, Barry. 2000. Understanding Agency: Social Theory and Responsible Action. London: Sage Publications. Bourdieu, Pierre. (1972) 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice, translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —​—​—​. (1979) 1984. Distinction:  A  Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruno, Giordano. (1584) 1998. Cause, Principle and Unity, translated by Robert D. Lucca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dewey, John. (1922) 1930. Human Nature and Conduct:  An Introduction to Social Psychology. New York: Modern Library. Hallpike, C. R. 1977. Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Joas, Hans. 1996. The Creativity of Action, translated by Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kant, Immanuel. (1938) 1975. The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, translated by Otto Mathey-​Zorn. New York: D. Appleton-​Century Company. Kopelowitz, Ezra and Matthew Diamond. 1998. “Religion That Strengthens Democracy: An Analysis of Religious Political Strategies in Israel.” Theory and Society 27: 671–​708. Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora’s Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —​—​—​. 2005. Reassembling the Social. New York: Oxford University Press. Luhmann, Niklas. 1990. Political Theory in the Welfare State, translated and introduced by John Bednarz Jr. New York: Walter de Gruyter. —​—​—​. 2000. Die Politik der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Machiavelli, Niccolo. (1531) 1998. Discourses on Livy, translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. (1532) 1998. The Prince, Second Edition, translated by Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marx, Karl. (1885) 1909. Capital, Volume II. Edited by Frederick Engels. Translated by Ernest Untermann. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Company. Oakeshott, Michael. 1962. Rationalism and Other Essays. New York: Basic Books. Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26: 126–​166. Parsons, Talcott. (1949) 1968. The Structure of Social Action (two volumes). Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1998. The Attack of the Blob:  Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Plato. 1991. The Republic of Plato: Second Edition, translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books. Walsh, Philip. 2015. Arendt Contra Sociology. Farnham: Ashgate. Weber, Max. (1915) 1946. “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, translated and edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 323–​359. New York: Oxford University Press.

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—​—​—​. (1918) 1946. “Politics as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, translated and edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 77–128. New  York:  Oxford University Press. —​—​—​. (1919) 1946. “Science as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, translated and edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 129–156. New York: Oxford University Press. —​—​—​. 1978a. Economy and Society (two volumes), edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press. Young-​Bruehl, Elisabeth. 1982. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Chapter 3 EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM: HEURISTIC MYTH AND SOCIAL SCIENCE Judith Adler

Picasso, told that his portrait of Gertrude Stein didn’t resemble the lady at all, is said to have retorted: “It will!” After half a century of debate, a similar retort might be leveled at dismissive critics of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Though it must now be conceded that some of Arendt’s claims were wrong, Eichmann’s afterlife in public memory remains decisively shaped by her portrait. Since the book’s publication in 1963, every significant discussion of Eichmann, much of the scholarship on the Shoah, or Holocaust and some of the best writing on genocide remains anchored in dialogue with Arendt. In fact, her Report on the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann (lieutenant-​colonel in the Gestapo, and chief administrator of Nazi genocidal policy) has long upstaged public interest in the man and his trial. Lending itself to changing interpretations, Arendt’s book has taken root in popular culture: film, fiction and journalism are replete with references to its subtitle. And it continues to inspire writing across a full spectrum of intellectual disciplines, including social sciences, about which Arendt expressed reservations (Baehr 2010b). What explains the longevity and generativity of this work? Eichmann in Jerusalem owes its vitality not only to its strengths, but also to its flaws –​as social science, though not as narrative. Arendt’s philosophical education led her to seek a story of universal –​even metaphysical –​significance in a unique event. Her Report on the Banality of Evil has qualities of a fictional masterpiece: emotionally gripping tone; portrait of one individual offered as representative of a social “type” or even a personification of a metaphysical principle; moral drama of the triumph of evil, simultaneously scaled to an individual career and to collective historical action set against a vast geographical landscape. Finally, there is the “catch” of a subtitle that nests extraordinary horror in the quotidian. Originally written without footnotes or professional jargon for

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The New Yorker, Arendt’s piece quickly secured a place in the discourses of specialist scholarship (history, law, psychoanalysis, political science, criminology, psychology, sociology). But imperatives of good storytelling may oppose those of sound social science, luring a master storyteller into theoretical dead ends. The very narrative strengths that secured Eichmann in Jerusalem a permanent place in social science discourse are also responsible for its weaknesses as social science. Only if this is recognized will scholars drawing inspiration from this classic of modern letters avoid being misled by it.

Occasion and Sources In 1960 Israeli agents captured Eichmann in Argentina and abducted him to Jerusalem to stand trial for crimes against humanity and the Jewish people. His capture and prosecution was a watershed historical event, decisively refocusing international attention from “war crimes” to the newly conceptualized crime of “genocide.” After news of the capture broke, Arendt asked The New Yorker to sponsor her travel to Jerusalem to cover the trial. She arrived in time for the opening session on 11 April 1961, and left on 29 June 1961, three days before the defendant was questioned. The trial lasted until 14 August 1961, with sentencing hearings in December, and an appeal in March 1962. Arendt wrote her report after being present for less than half of the sessions, declined to meet with the senior prosecutor (who instructed that she be given access to all trial documents) and refused invitations to meet the other prosecutors. She spent time with the presiding judge, whose “ironic and sarcastic” manner she enjoyed, as well as with a young German assistant to Eichmann’s defense attorney, whom she mentions frequently in letters to her husband, writing, “He really can’t do enough for me” (Arendt and Blücher 2000, 355, 357, 360–​361, 364, 367). Arendt’s Report then, drew upon direct experience of little more than two months’ on-​ site observations of a trial that lasted twice that long; social contacts and evasions determined by personal predilection; thorough reading of trial transcripts, preliminary police interrogations, the fraction of papers from Eichmann’s pre-​capture Argentine period available at the time1 – including excerpts from interviews conducted by Sassen, a fascist journalist, published in Life magazine (1960); and –​significantly –​upon more than a decade of prior engagement with issues of Zionism, anti-​Semitism and the destruction of European Jewry. Above all, Arendt’s montage of observations on the trial and the unprecedented Great Crime itself relied on path-​breaking historical scholarship by Poliakov (1951), Reitlinger (1953), Adler (1955) and –​especially –​Hilberg (1961). Eichmann in Jerusalem was brought out as a book in 1963 and republished two years later in an expanded edition. One of many reports on the trial, it

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quickly eclipsed all others, and subsequent writing on Eichmann and his trial is overwhelmingly an engagement with Arendt.

Black Comedy: A Question of Tone “[T]‌he act of putting a book like this into the world is an act of aggression.” Jaspers to Arendt, 16 November 1963 (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 531) “The horrible can be not only ludicrous but outright funny.” (Arendt [1963d] 2006, 48, 50. See also Arendt and McCarthy 1995, 119)

Summarizing vast amounts of information in lively prose, describing one man’s fall into crime of unprecedented scope and pronouncing moral judgment in the tradition of omniscient narrators, Eichmann in Jerusalem delivers gripping drama with pugilistic force. Arendt mocks and provokes every conceivable agent and interest in several arenas: the trial, Nazi-​occupied Europe, postwar Germany, the new Israeli state. A sampling of her targets turns up the following: opening criticism of Israel’s Zionist heroes, reigning prime minister, laws (some compared to Nazi Nuremburg laws) and motives for sponsoring what, like German right-​wing magazines of the period, she provocatively labels a “show trial.” There follow jabs at the German national character, damning assessments of Jewish leadership at the time of the Catastrophe and reminders that many peoples of Nazi-​occupied Europe took wholehearted part in the pillage and murder of their fellow citizens. Though supportive of Israel’s right to try Eichmann, and of the death sentence he received, Arendt mocked both the prosecuting and defense attorneys. She disapproved of the (precedent-​setting) decision to invite testimony from surviving victims of the genocide, claiming that focus on the “vast panorama” of Jewish suffering impeded recognition of a new kind of crime aimed at all humanity. She criticized the final judgment, offering a substitute of her own. Most decisively, she depicted Eichmann as a “clown” –​sparking outrage among Jews who regarded him as a monster, and pathos the only permissible tone to adopt with respect to the tragedy of a people. For reasons of personal history Arendt was prone to position herself as a “conscious pariah,” challenging ready-​drawn battle lines to goad all parties into debate. As is apparent in poems written in her youth, she also habitually sought refuge from painful emotion in irony. Eichmann in Jerusalem is a bitterly ironic black comedy. Its tone, which Arendt’s critics describe as arrogant, heartless, sneering, malicious, flippant and, given her subject, “unimaginably inappropriate” (Laqueur 2001, 61; Michaelis-​Stern 1968, 152–​160; Scholem 1978, 240–​245), has been excused by her defenders as a minor failing. Yet her

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book’s power to remain generatively alive even as newly available evidence has discredited some of its claims is due to this very tone! Eichmann in Jerusalem is a sustained howl of macabre humor realized through deadpan description and quotation without commentary, in which no party to the moral scandal of an epoch, including its victims, is spared. Solitary anathematization, especially of one’s own people, is an ancient prophetic genre. And Arendt, counseled by her mentor and friend Karl Jaspers that what was needed was “the spirit of the great old prophets,” delivers her judgment on the moral collapse of much of Europe in a mordantly sarcastic vein (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 411). The clowns and grotesques she evokes join those of other artists her circle admired: Georg Grosz (to whose caricatures she compares Eichmann’s defense attorney) and Bertolt Brecht. Under attack, Arendt defended her tone by quoting Brecht: “[T]‌ragedy deals with the sufferings of mankind in a less serious way than comedy” (Arendt and Blücher 2000, 360; Young-​Bruehl 1982, 331). Black comedy cultivates the sense of absurdity that has moved people to laughter at the brink of annihilation and can also serve as a defense against horror or pity.2 Arendt, wary of public expressions of emotion, confessed prior to departure for Jerusalem, “I dread the hysterical atmosphere I’ll be going into in Israel” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 430).Upon arrival she wrote her husband: “One of the journalists has already flung his arms around me, sobbing loudly. …You’d think you were in a theater.… The only consolation: this whole thing isn’t that important” (Arendt and Blücher 2000, 355). It is telling that the only trial witness whose performance met with her approval as “pure” was one whose testimony was “without pathos,” “even funny” (Arendt [1963d] 2006, 230; Arendt and Blücher 2000, 359). A German-​Jewish refugee abandoned in the hour of peril by German friends and intellectuals, including the mentor/​lover who had promised she would always be part of his life (Heidegger), Arendt suffered from the distrust and contempt profound betrayal leaves in its wake. “I often suffered because I had so much disdain,” she once confessed. “The worst was not what one’s enemies did, but what one’s friends did. It was like an empty room forming around oneself. Among intellectuals ‘co-​ordination’ [with the Nazis] was the rule. I  never forgot that. I  wanted nothing more to do with intellectuals” (Arendt 1964b). Upon completing Eichmann in Jerusalem Arendt admitted she had written it “in a curious state of euphoria” and “ever since” felt “light hearted about the whole matter.” “Don’t tell anybody,” she joked to Mary McCarthy. “Is it not proof positive that I have no ‘soul’?” (Arendt and McCarthy 1995, 168). Such euphoria suggests writing experienced as reparative triumph. Her old mentor Karl Jaspers, dismayed by reviewers’ criticism of her tone, assured her of his understanding. “You have,” he said, “something

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drawn from heartrending experience to convey, experience that doesn’t speak of itself but…is hidden in the style that…people reproach you for, calling you ironic, cold, heartless, know-​it-​all, misanthropic” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 541). The cover page of Eichmann in Jerusalem quotes Brecht:  “O Germany  –​ Hearing the speeches that ring from your house, one laughs. But whoever sees you, reaches for his knife.” Black comedy is not a recognized genre of social science, nor do classes on theory and methods focus on founding texts of social science noir. If this should ever change, Arendt’s text may be recognized as a mirror fabricated to obliquely contemplate the Gorgon seen face to face only by those who don’t survive the encounter. Rather than constituting a flaw in her work, it is precisely Arendt’s tone that has kept her “act of aggression” resiliently alive.

Dual Foci While juridically the Eichmann trial focused on determining the defendant’s culpability, it was also designed to document the Nazi destruction of European Jewry. Arendt adopted both foci, offering a detailed description both of the steps by which one individual became the agent of an unprecedented crime, and of those by which a genocidal policy was improvised, tested and perfected. Arendt’s attention to the process by which one individual became an instrument of evil (a classic trope in novelistic treatments of moral descent), and of the stages by which hundreds of thousands came to collude in the murder of millions, is of enduring value. She draws attention to initial actions necessary to lay the groundwork for human extermination. People targeted for victimization had first to be legally identified, socially stigmatized, robbed of their property, expelled from employment and rendered stateless. Killing operations had to be improvised and improved before slaughter could finally be organized on an industrial scale. In describing how the Nazis secured mass collusion in mass murder, Arendt relied heavily on the documentary research of Raul Hilberg (1961). She drew upon Hilberg’s detailed description of the step-​by-​step assembly of a juridical/​ bureaucratic machinery of mass murder in which every institution and profession in Germany played a part, upon his analysis of tactics used to deceive the victims and upon his claim that the bureaucrats who kept this machinery running were not fanatical “haters.” Hilberg’s focus on the “mechanics of destruction,” with its network analysis and attention to the Nazi state’s innovative fusion of multiple institutional subcultures and legal precedents to effect an unprecedented crime, is brilliant social science. But it doesn’t make for a gripping story. His detailed description of the machinery of destruction, backed up

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by overwhelmingly detailed documentary evidence, lacks necessary features of a satisfying morality tale. Arendt supplied them, creating a riveting narrative for a public whose attention could never have been captured by Hilberg’s 800 page monograph. Moving away from his focus on institutional precedents and subcultures, and on the situational shaping of behavior, Arendt stressed individual moral failure, even if multiplied to masses of individuals, and sketched a portrait of a social type offered as explanation for the Catastrophe. In doing so, she crafted a morality tale whose grip on popular and scholarly imagination has not slackened. But she also took a step away from the answers that social science –​ focusing on institutions, networks, subcultures and social situations, rather than individual moral failings considered in abstraction from these, or considered in relation to such grand abstractions as modernity, technological rationalism, bureaucracy or mass society –​can bring to the problem she articulated. Arendt’s failure to adequately credit Hilberg has been attributed to her lack of generosity. But her dismissive remark to Jaspers that Hilberg was “useful,” but “only because he just reports facts” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 550), suggests an inability to recognize non-​expository theory in matter-​of-​fact description. Where Arendt saw only facts, unrelieved by philosophical profundity, Hilberg was offering an indispensable analytic perspective on genocide. Arendt’s failure to recognize the theory governing his documentary research compromised her own narrative solution to the problem she framed: that of understanding a new kind of crime, involving massive numbers of perpetrators, acting not in violation of the authority of the state but at its bidding. Following Hilberg, Arendt describes how the German army, French police, Ukrainian volunteers, Polish informers, Greek and Dutch municipal authorities, lawyers, doctors, university professors, Catholic and Protestant churchmen, Jewish rabbis and notables, banks, insurance and railway companies all played essential roles in a Europe-​wide dragnet and expedition of civilian slaughter. She notes the opportunities for looting that motivated perpetrators and created beneficiaries of genocide at every social level.3 And she draws attention to variations in Jewish survival rates in different parts of Europe, crediting these differences to moral differences in their host populations. (Here, circular reasoning aborts explanation, as reference to the “almost automatic general humanity” of the Italians, “an old and civilized people,” or the “inbred” “independence” and “political responsibility” of the Danes surmises these virtues from the very behavior they are invoked to explain.)

Competing Portraits and Narratives Shortly after Eichmann joined the SS he sought to distinguish himself as an expert on Jews, reading Zionist texts, spying on Zionist meetings, claiming

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to be able to read Hebrew. Like other Nazis, he also repeatedly cast himself as an “idealist.” (“Now that the devil himself was in the dock,” Arendt notes dryly, “he turned out to be an idealist” [(1963d) 2006, 42]). Over time, Eichmann considered many schemes for ridding the Reich of Jews  –​from forcing emigration to Palestine, to “resettlement” and planned starvation in Madagascar to, finally, transport to killing installations. By 1938 he had developed procedures for ensuring that expulsion of Jews from their home territories operated without “friction.” In Vienna he organized, in his own words, a sort of “conveyor belt” in which police, various ministries and Jewish notables forced into compliance all worked under one roof. “It was like a factory,” Arendt quotes a trial witness as saying. “At one end you put in a Jew who still has some property. … [H]‌e goes through the building from counter to counter, from office to office, and comes out at the other end without any money, without any rights, with only a passport on which it says: ‘You must leave the country within a fortnight. Otherwise you will go to a concentration camp’ ” ([1963d] 2006, 46,48). As the Reich expanded, more Jews came under its control and Eichmann’s office prospered. Eichmann now comported himself as a master of life and death, dispatching subordinates abroad to apply techniques of forced expulsion pioneered in Vienna. When slave labor camps and ghettos lost absorptive capacity, and the opening of a Russian front blocked expulsion outside the eastern boundaries of the Reich, forced transport was combined with mass executions  –​first by shooting and gas vans, then by slaughter facilities capable of killing up to 12,000 people a day. In 1941 Eichmann was told that the Führer had ordered the complete extermination of all Jews. Now officially a “bearer of secrets,” he was bound by oath to observe strict language rules in referring to the matter: “special treatment,” “Final Solution,” “resettlement,” “labor in the East.” It is of great interest, Arendt observes, “to know how long it takes an average person to overcome his innate repugnance toward crime” (italics mine, [1963d] 2006, 93). Human proclivity for rapid, radical moral conversion and re-​conversion is one of Arendt’s themes. Did Eichmann have a conscience? Arendt’s answer:  he had a conscience, and his conscience functioned for about four weeks, though even then “it did its work within rather odd limits.” Eichmann admitted that the thought of killing German, as opposed to foreign, Jews disturbed him at first. But then he realized that gassing was “the most humane solution.” He later testified that at the Wannsee Conference convened to coordinate implementation of the Final Solution, where he was tasked with writing up the record, he felt relieved –​“like Pontius Pilate.” Others had taken the decision. Who was he to have thoughts on the matter? ([1963d] 2006, 93, 95, 108–​109,114). Arendt concludes he was unable to think at all, and was in

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this respect representative of 80 million other Germans ([1963d] 2006, 52, 64, 67, 83–​86, 159). Though Arendt’s Report replicates the trial’s focus on the culpability of the defendant and organization of the genocide, she departed from the narratives designed into the trial to offer a competing one of her own (Bilsky 2001). The Israeli prosecutor cast the Shoah as the latest and worst episode in the history of anti-​Semitic persecutions. Arendt, resuming a position adopted in earlier writings, cast it as an attack on all humanity, having as its aim the denial of human plurality (Arendt [1945a] 1994; [1946b] 1994; [1952] 2007, 453–​461; Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 420, 424–​425). Identifying Jewish preoccupations with anti-​Semitism with a “ghetto mentality” she despised (Arendt and Blücher 2000, 368), Arendt was drawn by her storyline to minimize the significance of anti-​Semitism both for the Holocaust and in Eichmann’s motivation. It is telling that even when stressing the usefulness of Hilberg’s Destruction of the European Jews to Jaspers she claimed its first chapter, which set the stage for examining the Holocaust by offering an overview of historical anti-​Semitism, “wouldn’t pass muster in a pig pen” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 550). Three years after the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem Arendt did acknowledge that anti-​Semitism prepared the way for the Holocaust ([1966b] 1978, 268). And earlier writings, including her book on totalitarianism, characterized along the lines of her first husband’s life’s work as a system predicated on making men “superfluous” (Anders 2002), devote considerable attention to it (1951b, ix, 433; [1952] 2007, 459–​460). In 1950 she had even stated that what was unprecedented about Nazi crime was not the number of victims or perpetrators, but the “ideological nonsense which caused” the murders ([1950b] 1994, 243). But Eichmann in Jerusalem was driven by its storyline to downplay anti-​Semitism in particular and ideology in general. “There are some points in the Report which … are in conflict with the book on totalitarianism,” she wrote Mary McCarthy. “Eichmann was much less influenced by ideology than I assumed in the book on totalitarianism. …Extermination per se is more important than anti-​Semitism” (Arendt and McCarthy 1995, 147–​148). Every genocide develops its own momentum, slaughter becoming an end in itself. But no genocide can be understood without reference to the ideology that determines the choice of victims and provides the rationalizations mass mobilization for mass murder requires. By minimizing the role of anti-​ Semitism to cast the Shoah as a crime aimed at all humanity, Arendt launched a universalizing narrative capable of serving as a touchstone for discourses about an ever-​changing diversity of evils. But to understand how this widened frame struck many Jews, it is only necessary to recall the taboo against mentioning  Jews at all observed by the rare German churchman weakly protesting

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the killings, by Allied governments fearing to incite popular resistance to the war and by postwar memorials in Eastern Europe that universalize Nazi victimhood while avoiding any mention of local collusion in robbing and killing Jews. Even more provocatively, ignoring the lives saved by timely emigration to Palestine, Arendt argued that the “Jewish consciousness” the trial fostered was the very kind that made Zionists complicit in Eichmann’s first deportations ([1963d] 2006, 40–​42, 59–​62). Arendt’s portrait of Eichmann directly challenged the picture drawn by the prosecution and reconfirmed by the judges. “[T]‌he more grandiose Mr. Hausner’s [the prosecutor’s] rhetoric became, the paler and more ghostlike became the figure in the glass booth, and no finger-​wagging, ‘And there sits the monster responsible for all this,’ could shout him back to life,” she wrote ([1963d] 2006, 8). While insisting that the scale of Eichmann’s crime rendered it unforgivable and essentially unpunishable, Arendt depicted the defendant as “normal,” “ordinary,” cliché-​ridden and “thoughtless.” Not a monster but –​ as she later characterized Hitler too –​a “clown” (Young-​Bruehl 1982, 331). Arendt never claimed that everyone is a potential Eichmann, and her remarks on the incidence of his type are inconsistent. In the postscript to a second edition, calling attention to “the strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil,” she specified:  “It was sheer thoughtlessness  –​something by no means identical with stupidity –​that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals. …And if this is ‘banal’ and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, that is still far from calling it commonplace” ([1963d] 2006, 288). But the agent of evil Arendt sketched is so drained of passion and intelligence as to appear a phantom. “Eichmann is no eagle; rather, a ghost who … minute by minute fades in substance,” she wrote Jaspers, who had written her, “[T]‌he word ‘enemy’ strikes me as too positive. An enemy is still a somebody” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 411, 419, 434). “Eichmann looks as if he should never have existed,” her husband wrote her at the same time (Arendt and Blücher 2000, 354). With annihilatory determination Arendt, Blücher and Jaspers cast Eichmann as a cipher so deprived of being that even his death, absurdly unable to balance the scales of justice, could not really matter. “I am glad they hanged Eichmann,” she wrote Mary McCarthy. “Not that it mattered. But they would have made themselves utterly ridiculous … if they had not” (Arendt and McCarthy 1995, 136). Arendt’s portrait converges with Eichmann’s self-​presentation in court, and with the tactical line his lawyer had already crafted to defend war criminals in earlier Nuremberg trials. “I never killed anybody,” Eichmann asserted, presenting himself as a “victim of totalitarianism” who bore no ill will toward Jews. Carefully avoiding any reference to the ideology of the defeated state

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he had served, Eichmann projected the image of a disciplined official, governed by an obedience that was “not easy,” who became helplessly “entangled in atrocities.” His attorney even appealed to “the findings of modern group psychology,” arguing (like misreadings of Arendt) that what happened to Eichmann, and in Germany “can in the future happen to anyone” anywhere (State of Israel 1994, vol. V, 2216). But while the tactical rationale for the image Eichmann and his lawyer projected was obvious, that for Arendt’s broad-​brushed sketch of a “vacuous” little man was different. Shortly after the war, Karl Jaspers, who once practiced as a psychiatrist, warned her of the romance anointing great criminals, stressing the danger of mythologizing “satanic greatness.” “It seems to me,” Jaspers wrote Arendt in 1946, “we have to see these things in their total banality, in their prosaic triviality, because that’s what truly characterizes them” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 62). References to the demonic (legion in the transcript of the trial) carried hints of stature that Arendt and her mentor, aware of Nazi exaltations of supermen acting “beyond good and evil,” were determined to ward off. As it turned out, Arendt’s initial sketches of Eichmann failed to convince Jaspers, who insisted on his “brutality.” “Such a functionary of bureaucratic murder cannot, after all, be without personally inhuman qualities, which under the proper circumstances come to the surface, even though under ‘normal’ conditions he would not have become a criminal,” he wrote her. “It will not be easy for you to draw a picture of this man that represents his reality” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 439). In another provocation, perilously reminiscent of a line of defense war criminals used in Nuremburg, Arendt accused Jewish leaders of “collaborating” in the destruction of their own people. By Eichmann’s own account, Jewish functionaries and ghetto police, ordered to itemize property, collect fines, draw up lists for transport to death camps and maintain order, were useful adjuncts. But Arendt went further, claiming that without the collaboration of Jewish notables fewer Jews would have been slaughtered. “To a Jew,” she wrote, reaching for dramatic effect, “this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.” “I have dwelt on this chapter of the story, which the Jerusalem trial failed to put before the eyes of the world, because it offers the most striking insight into the totality of the moral collapse the Nazis caused … not only among the persecutors but also among the victims” ([1963d] 2006, 117, 124, 125–​126). Subsequent historical research has discredited Arendt’s blanket claim (Friedlander 2007, xxiv, 87–​88,154–​157,181–​182, 304–​305, 435,488, 555–​557). And testimonies of concentration camp survivors have yielded more understanding of the moral “grey zones” in which people presented with impossible choices struggled for survival (Améry 1980; Langbein

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2004; Lanzmann 1975, 21–​36; Levi [1958] 1996; 1988, 36–​69). But in raising a question avoided by the defense out of care not to offend a Jewish court and by a prosecutor determined to use the trial to foster Jewish unity, Arendt rubbed salt in the wounds of a surviving remnant. Pathos-​averse black comedy rules out some kinds of empathic imagination, and Arendt’s philosophical education predisposed her to rush to judgment. Arendt drew two reassuring moral “lessons” from the trial. Permanent cover-​up of great crimes is not possible. And while under conditions of terror most people will comply, “some people will not.” The Final Solution met with widespread acquiescence in occupied Europe, but it did not happen everywhere[italics in the text] ([1963d] 2006, 232–​233). Though approving the court’s final death sentence, Arendt insisted the judges had failed to understand the nature of a new kind of crime and criminal. “Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement,” she claimed, Eichmann “had no motives at all … He merely … never realized what he was doing” ([1963d] 2006, 276). Given the legal centrality of intent, a mass murderer “perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong” ([1963d] 2006, 26), as she claimed Eichmann was, could not have been prosecuted. But Arendt’s evocation of unknowing, motive-​less evil has been attractive to many, and an ever-​changing variety of topics have been addressed under her banner. Arendt asserted that the judges should have “dared to address their defendant in something like the following terms: … we are concerned here only with what you did, and not with the possible noncriminal nature of your inner life and of your motives.” “[J]‌ust as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations …we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang” ([1963d] 2006, 277, 279). Proclaimed disinterest in the defendant’s inner life and motives is telling, as is the confident assertion that no one could be expected to want to share the earth with him. Asked by a German interviewer if she did not think that millions of people would not object to sharing the earth with Eichmann, Arendt answered, “What I  meant … is that no one can be reasonably expected to. That many people do not know that this is an unreasonable expectation does not refute the sentence” (Young-​ Bruehl 1982, 372,526, n.136).

Arendt before Jerusalem “The whole thing so damned banal and indescribably low and repulsive.” Arendt, upon arrival in Jerusalem (Arendt and Blücher 2000, 357)

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The subtitle of Arendt’s book appears only once in the text, as an italicized final note before the Epilogue and Postscript. To illustrate Eichmann’s “grotesque silliness” she quotes his last words:  “ ‘Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I  shall not forget them.’ In the face of death, he had found the cliché …he was ‘elated’ and he forgot that this was his own funeral. It was as though … he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us –​the lesson of the fearsome, word-​ and-​thought-​defying banality of evil” ([1963] 2006, 252). Unlike “totalitarianism” or “genocide,” evil cannot be operationalized by social science, and scholars have had difficulty finding a conceptual vocabulary adequate to the Holocaust. Everett Hughes’ “Good People and Dirty Work,” delivered as a public lecture in 1948, directly addresses the problem that preoccupied Arendt (Hughes [1962] 1971, 87–​97), but other early efforts to approach the issue in a spirit of “sociological detachment” carry a whiff of unreality (Adler 1958). While Arendt rejected pathos for black comedy, she did insist that to write of horrors sine ira et studio (without bitterness or partiality)is not to be “objective,” but to condone them ([1953c] 1994, 403). She was not alone in sensing that no term other than “evil” would serve, and by using it she opened her text, and scholarship engaging with it, to connotations accrued over centuries of theological and common usage. Coupling the word “evil” with “banality” –​in Arendt’s usage, synonymous with low, vile, trivial, ignoble  –​anchors uncanny horror in a disenchanted, humanly inhuman world. The apparently oxymoronic tag has fertilized decades of discourse with connotations that “disciplined” social sciences rigorously excluded. Breaching walls erected between metaphysical, theological, philosophical and popular traditions on one hand, and conceptual vocabularies prevailing in social science on the other, Arendt inspired a number of disciplines (foremost among them sociology and social psychology) to take on the problem of evil. Yet she herself, proceeding through the breach in the direction of her premier amour, philosophy of a Heideggerian cast, ultimately took an unrewarding path. In a tribute to conventions of journalism and social science that demand discoveries based on experience ungoverned by preconception, Arendt repeatedly claimed she reached the conclusions of her Eichmann book by covering the trial. Yet Arendt had developed all the major ideas broached in her book before undertaking the assignment. Her claim that Jewish leaders who did not abdicate their positions betrayed their own people is seamlessly continuous with writings published between 1938 and 1952 asserting that “the real obstacle in the path of [Jewish] emancipation was not

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anti-​Semitism” but oppression by Jews’ own elites. Sketching two types of Jews, “parvenus” and “pariahs,” she identified “notables” with the first and reserved approval for pariahs, who maintained their purity through “absolute isolation,” to remain “one of the people” ([1938] 2007; [1940] 2007; [1942] 2007; [1952] 2007, 53–​56,121 n.22, 127,340,457–​460;[1944] 1978, 67–​90).This esteem for “purity,” and identification of morally compromising efforts of negotiation with collaboration, led Arendt to condemn a Jewish rescuer such as Kasztner, who saved more than 1,600 (“selected”) lives ([1963d] 2006, 118, 143). Arendt wrote her 1929 PhD dissertation on Augustine, whose solution to the problem of theodicy (reconciling a good creator with the existence of evil) had been to deny that evil has being, essence or positive nature. While in Eichmann in Jerusalem Arendt completely abandoned Augustine’s concern with emotional orientations (“motions of the soul”: caritas vs. cupidity), Augustinian conceptions of evil as absence, lack and privation4 paved the way for her characterization of Eichmann as vacuous, thoughtless, incapable of “knowing.” Well before departure for Jerusalem Arendt had determined that the man she wished to see with her own eyes was vacuous. “I would never be able to forgive myself if I didn’t go and look at this walking disaster face to face in all his bizarre vacuousness,” she wrote Jaspers (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 409–​410). Already in 1945, writing of Himmler, Eichmann’s superior, Arendt referred to a “comic element” of the “horror” and limned the features of a new human “type,” not to be confused with any particular national character: This type was entirely prepared to do literally anything. … The only condition he put was that he should be fully exempted from responsibility for his acts. Thus … the average German … now serves the machine of destruction. … Himmler’s over-​all organization relies not on fanatics … murderers … [or] sadists; it relies entirely upon the normality of jobholders and family men. We need not specially mention the sorry reports about Latvians, Lithuanians, or even Jews who have participated in Himmler’s murder organization in order to show that it requires no particular national character in order to supply this new type of functionary. ([1945a] 1994, 128–​129)

In 1950, she described SS guards of the extermination camps in the same vein: [W]‌e must … discard the notion that they constituted a kind of negative elite of criminals, sadists. …All evidence points to the fact that the SS men in charge were completely normal. ([1950b] 1994, 239)

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Arendt’s portrait of Eichmann builds on these earlier sketches. Even the subtitle that ensured Eichmann in Jerusalem its lasting fame was probably seeded in reading (of Joseph Conrad),5 and certainly seeded in correspondence with Jaspers, that predates the trial. After her book’s publication Jaspers wrote Arendt: Alcopley told me that Heinrich [Arendt’s husband] suggested the phrase “the banality of evil” and is cursing himself for it now because you’ve had to take the heat for what he thought of. Perhaps the report isn’t true, or my recollection of it is garbled. …The point is that this evil, not evil per se, is banal. (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 542)

Jaspers may have been probing with exquisite tact to see if Arendt recalled his own part in the formulation of the phrase. For in 1946, critical of Arendt’s impulse to deny criminal motivations in Nazi agents, he had written: I am not altogether comfortable with your view, because a guilt that goes beyond all criminal guilt inevitably takes on a streak of “greatness” –​of satanic greatness –​which is, for me, as inappropriate for the Nazis as all the talk about the “demonic” element in Hitler.…It seems to me that we have to see these things in their total banality. (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 62)

Urging Arendt to find a solution to what, at this early date, Jaspers already recognized as the problem of tone, he warned that the “aesthetic sense” risked falsifying treatments of Nazi crime, and suggested that social science was more appropriate for such material than philosophy, which would only confirm Nazi pretensions to ideas. “A Shakespeare would never be able to give adequate form to this material –​his instinctive aesthetic sense would lead to falsification. … There is no idea and no essence here. Nazi crime is properly a subject for psychology and sociology, for psychopathology and jurisprudence only” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 62). Arendt, already committed to the idea that a new kind of crime was defined by an absence of wicked, or even humanly understandable, motives responded: I realize completely that in the way I  have expressed this up to now I  come dangerously close to that “satanic greatness” that I, like you, totally reject. But still, there is a difference between a man who sets out to murder his old aunt and people who without considering the economic usefulness of their actions … built factories to produce corpses.6 … Perhaps what is behind it all is only that

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individual human beings did not kill other individual human beings for human reasons, but that an organized attempt was made to eradicate the concept of the human being. (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 69)

After two decades, Arendt found her compromise, coupling “evil” with the “banality” on which Jaspers insisted. Though already in Origins of Totalitarianism she had written that in concentrations camps “the nihilistic banality of homo homini lupus is consistently realized” (1951b, 433), she later distinguished her recourse in that work to Kant’s concept of “radical evil” (1951b, 385, 430–​ 433; [1952] 2007, 460–​461; Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 166), which she used to denote destructiveness predicated on human “superfluity,” divorced from understandable motives and rooted in delusions of omnipotence, from her subsequent stress on the “banality of evil.” Only good, she now proclaimed, could be “radical.” The revised formulation drops the word “radical,” together with reference to “delusions of omnipotence,” to place the accent on “banality.” To appreciate this shift, it is useful to recall the positive connotations the term radikal held for Arendt7 and her generation, including Nazi executors of the Final Solution, who urged one another to proceed in a “radical manner” with respect to Jewish matters (Hilberg 2001, 104). But the reformulation also conforms to centuries-​old religious teachings that powers attributed to evil are to be despised. Arendt’s casting of Eichmann as an ordinary functionary representing “hundreds of thousands like him” kick-​started a perspective on the Shoah and other genocides amplified in subsequent decades by a fashion for subaltern history. The literature in this tradition, often indicated by the word “ordinary” in a title, is now vast (Browning 1992; Fulbrook 2013; Goldhagen 1996; Jensen and Szejnmann 2008; Lozowick2000; Osiel 2002; Waller 2007). One recent contribution criticizes Arendt for an “ideal type” whose gender bias leads scholars to overlook the ordinary women who took part in killing operations (Lower 2013).But while the mythos of the ordinary perpetrator has been heuristically useful, Arendt’s depiction of the historical Eichmann as an ordinary clerk has proven untenable, especially as a trove of transcripts and writings from Eichmann’s Argentinian period, unavailable at the time of the trial, have now been studied (Stangneth 2014). Critics sympathetic to Arendt argue that even if her portrait bears little likeness to Eichmann, it fits a myriad of others (“right type, wrong guy”). The urge to differentiate agents of evil from people who resist it as distinct social types has lost none of its allure, nor has doing do so on the basis of purported differences in their ability to “think” (independently, or from the standpoint of another). But this endeavor, however appealing in a morality tale, has little to offer social science.

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Ambiguity and Renown “[T]‌he whole critical uproar ultimately only added to your prestige.” Jaspers to Arendt, 24 March 1964 (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 549)

Arendt’s book set off bitter debates about the Holocaust, goading inquiry on topics ranging from the true nature of Eichmann (Cesarani 2004; Lipstadt 2011; Safrian 2010, 3), to the behavior of Jewish leaders (Bender 2008, 103–​ 154, 213–​215, 290–​304; Hilberg 1992, 105–​117; Hilberg and Staron 1979; Lawson 2010, 255–​260; Trunk 1972), to motives animating genocidaires (Browning 1992; Friedlander 1969; Langbein 2004; Mikhman 2003, 338ff; Osiel 2002), and the legitimacy, or appropriate referent, of the word “banality.” “[T]‌here is no ‘banality of evil,’ ” growled Jean Améry, “and Hannah Arendt, who wrote about it in her Eichmann book, knew the enemy of mankind only from hearsay … When an event places the most extreme demands on us, one ought not to speak of banality” (1980, 25). “She did not recognize the magnitude of what [Eichmann] had done with a small staff,” wrote Hilberg. “There was no ‘banality’ in this ‘evil’ ” (1996, 150). The only Jewish ghetto administrator to survive stressed Eichmann’s “corruption,” violence and shrewd exploitation of opportunities for extortion. “And they wrote that he was a banal, small man,” he scoffed. “He was a demon!” (Lanzmann 1975). Controversy settled on questions central to every morality tale. Did Jewish leaders, in a “totality of moral collapse,” bear responsibility for the catastrophe that befell their people? Was Eichmann an obedient functionary or thoughtless “joiner”? If he wasn’t, does Arendt’s portrait nevertheless capture the desk-​ murderer as a social type? Ambiguity of reference, not a virtue in science, strengthens a work of art. The uncertain reference of “banality,” in Arendt’s own usage, has certainly strengthened hers. There has been little elucidation of the appeal of the word “banal” –​best ascribed neither to evil itself, nor to the particular evil the Nazis executed, nor to Eichmann or his purported “stupidity,”8 but to the motives and means by which genocide becomes embedded in daily life. For it is through these means that masses of people become agents of crimes that take on the “natural” appearance of “necessity.” A complex division of labor is also always a moral division of labor, effected through implicit mandates and routinely delegated micro-​tasks and moral judgments (Hughes 1971; Osiel 2002). In a perspective cultivated by the best traditions of social science, the phrase “banality of evil” prods attention to ways in which evil projects, once institutionalized and given the blessing of moral authorities, pass under the moral radar of many of their agents.9 Not the postman is banal, but his deliveries, which include orders to report for transport to the east; not the

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neighbors are banal, but their failure to greet when embarrassed by the appearance of a yellow star on a sleeve; not the policeman assigned to an Einsatzgruppen is banal, but the pressure he feels not to let down his peers by shirking collectively assigned dirty work (shooting old people, women, children); not the railway guard is banal, but his daily “beat,” in the course of which he guards nailed-​up wagons of human “shipments”; not the nurse is banal, but her routine, that includes giving lethal injections once “mercy killing” “falls within the medical sphere.”10 This is the manner in which mass murder presents itself to many agents. Not as an immoral temptation, or an ethical problem subject to inner debate, but as one of many things that have to be managed if trouble is to be avoided. To proceed smoothly, genocide, perpetrated by thousands carrying out micro-​actions stimulating little reflection, also requires the acquiescence of thousands of others who do not respond to mute looks of appeal, publicly challenge what is taking place or –​ even as victims –​make a scene. After the decimation of European Jewry, Israel and the United States became new centers of Jewish life, the first as a client state of the second, now the world’s greatest power. Hence Jews everywhere would not be indifferent to the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem in an opinion-​shaping American magazine. Notified by a member of the German Council of Jews of an imminent “declaration of war” against her and Hilberg (whose focus on failures of Jewish leadership Eichmann in Jerusalem had drawn to their attention), Arendt responded that Hilberg had only a “limited scholarly audience,” and suggested the Council not confuse its campaign by fighting on too many fronts (Young-​Bruehl 1982, 347–​348, 523, n.62). She later claimed the “uproar in Jewish circles” was due to a conspiracy against her, and referred ironically to her own “war with the Jews” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 510, 516, 632). But as Jaspers predicted, that “war” only ensured her book’s renown.

Anti-​Semite? Sadist? Helpless Cog? “There was no sign in him [Eichmann] of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives. … It was not stupidity but thoughtlessness. … [W]‌hen confronted with situations for which … routine procedures did not exist he was helpless.” (Arendt 1978, 4)

Immediately after the war Arendt charged anti-​Semitism with preparing the ground for extermination ([1945a] 1994; [1950b] 1994, 140–​150, 232–​247). Eichmann in Jerusalem avoids the topic and is unable to account for local differences in genocidal initiatives. This is a significant weakness, for as Jan Gross reminds us, what many Jews saw moments before death were not unknown

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agents but familiar faces, “their own neighbors, who chose to kill … willing executioners” (Gross 2001, 121). Attitudes are unreliable predictors of behavior, and explicitly avowed anti-​Semitism did not prevent some anti-​Semites from risking their lives to save Jews. But to explain how thousands become active collaborators and bystander-​beneficiaries to mass murder, it remains essential to focus on belief in the existence of a “problem” subject to violent “solution,” and on the erosion of taboos against publicly insulting, plundering and killing members of a targeted population. Arendt skirts the topic of anti-​Semitism to assure a universal subject for her story. But anti-​Semitism is not only about Jews. And without attending to this long-​term cultural tradition11 it is not possible to understand how widespread cooperation in an exterminatory project was secured. Two years after publishing Eichmann in Jerusalem Arendt wrote about a Frankfurt trial of lower-​level Auschwitz functionaries she claimed should be read as “a supplement to the Jerusalem trial” ([1966a] 2003). These defendants (for the most part laborers) tortured and killed face to face, acting with “feeble-​minded satanic ingenuity” on the basis of personal whim. Though Arendt insists they were not “clinically” sadists, and would not have exhibited sadism under “normal” circumstances,” here she does–​like camp survivors Améry (1980) and Adler (1958)  –​identify sadism as a reigning principle of the concentration camps. Her description of the “sly, primitive, brutish” behavior of these men differs markedly from her depiction of Eichmann, in whom she discerned neither sadism, nor fanatical anti-​Semitism, nor criminal motivation of any kind. She notes the defendants’ “smiling, smirking impertinence” in court, explained with reference to a German “climate of opinion” they knew to be on their side, and wonders if the “average citizen” only lacks opportunity for enjoying sadistic sport. But determined to deliver a salutary moral lesson she concludes this “supplement” to the Eichmann book with a story of a “good” SS doctor, ostensibly demonstrating that even in Auschwitz, “everyone could decide for himself to be good or evil” ([1966a] 2003, 252). (On the unreliability of such stories, and of the memories on which they are based, see Langbein 2004, 294–​301.) The distinction between acting on the basis of personal motives and obeying orders was a crucial juridical consideration in the sentencing of Nazi war criminals (Browning 2010). Not one of Eichmann’s men arrested after the war publicly admitted to harboring ill will against Jews, or taking satisfaction in their persecution (Fulbrook 2013, 67–​68, 365, n.6; Safrian 2010, 219–​220). Arendt has been accused of being fooled by Eichmann. It is more likely that, while recognizing sadism in its most brutal physical and lower-​class forms, she was blind to its white-​collar expressions. And –​most crucially –​that she was

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furiously disinterested in the historical Eichmann. Insisting that Eichmann was a vacuous nobody, whose “inner life” was nonexistent or of no interest, is a form of willed annihilation. To understand another’s motives and pleasures requires a degree of provisional identification that Arendt was unwilling, and probably unable, to attempt with Eichmann. Stangneth, criticizing Arendt’s portrait, has been quoted as saying, “To understand someone like Eichmann you have to sit down and think with him” (Schluessler 2014). But some subjects test the limits of interpretive understanding grounded in adopting the perspective of the Other. And like all master storytellers, Arendt’s imagination was overwhelmingly engaged with a character of her own invention, designed to advance a particular narrative line: that evildoing is possible in the absence of wicked motives, and that Kant’s dictum that stupidity is caused by a wicked heart should be turned on its head. Eichmann was not, as Arendt claimed, unable “to think from the standpoint of somebody else” ([1963d] 2006, 49), nor was he reliably rule-​abiding and obedient. It is necessary to imagine the thoughts and feelings of others to manipulate them, and Eichmann was a master of deception.“To think from the standpoint of somebody else” is not the same as empathy, compassion or that involuntary mirroring of suffering that can make it a torture to harm another. Evidence available at the time of Arendt’s writing shows Eichmann broke bureaucratic rules to deny allowable exemptions; physically assaulted petitioners; sabotaged superior orders that threatened to compromise his war against the Jews; and exploited opportunities to profit from extortion and plunder. In fact, revelation of the extent to which Eichmann and other mid-​level functionaries undertook actions on their own initiative has led to scholarly consensus that no genocide is designed in full detail by the highest authorities and merely executed by obedient subordinates (Browning 2004, 213ff, 243, 252, 284; Safrian 2010, 12). Like other Nazi officials praising men who did not kill “out of personal hatred, but out of a mature political and historical perspective” (Browning 2004, 404), Eichmann claimed to disapprove of disorderly violence. Asked about instructions he had given in connection with human “shipments,” he answered, “always and invariably the same:  Avoidable cruelties are to be avoided” (Lang 1983, 146). But administrative protocol is no reliable indicator of a culture of operations. Recalling the conference where the “Final Solution” was ratified, Eichmann remembered drinking and standing up on his chair to sing with other high-​level functionaries. Collective exaltation and excitement was part of the planning and execution of genocide at every status level. Sadistic play with the helpless, the thrill of a hunt accompanied by joking, pride in displays of toughness, trophy-​taking and photography are discernible in every arena of Nazi killing operations, as they are in genocidal

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actions taking place today. And in every photograph of every gathering one can usually discover a smile. White-​collar sadism, which Arendt did not discern, takes many forms. Eichmann noted the pleasure the commander of Auschwitz took in showing visitors disturbing cruelties while displaying his own “hardness.”12 Though Himmler stressed that killing should be ordered so that executioners did not “become sadists” (i.e., by following shooting “actions” with lectures on German “spiritual life” [Hilberg 2001, 115]), sadism was built into SS roles. While in many situations cruelty was instrumentally deployed, in others it was openly and collectively enjoyed for its own sake. And open enjoyment was never prosecuted. Descriptions of deportations Eichmann’s men conducted mention brass knuckles, broken noses, dangling eyes (Safrian 2010, 119–​120). This was the unit Eichmann crafted. The emotionally unexpressive captive permitted to appear in court in a suit and tie was not the bellowing uniformed officer remembered by those who tried to negotiate with him at the height of his powers. Eichmann himself, in an exculpatory 1956 manuscript designed to pave the way for his return to Germany, had written, “We were all… little cogs in the machine of the Head Office for Reich Security.” But once freed to step out of character after his appeal had been lost, he complained to his attorney:  “I can’t stand hearing the word ‘cog’ anymore, because this is not true” (Gerlach 2001, 451, n.120; Stangneth 2014, 216).

A Compelling Fiction It has become commonplace to dramatize critiques of modernity, bureaucracy and technological rationality by linking these to the Holocaust–​as Heidegger evasively did. Given this imagery, it is important to note that a large proportion of the Nazis’ victims were not murdered in gas chambers but –​like the victims of subsequent genocides –​by planned starvation, forced marches, shooting squads, peasants’ scythes. Technological and bureaucratic facilitation of mass murder does not explain it, and the image of the thoughtless bureaucrat is a falsifying cliché. While Nazis held bureaucratic rules, regulations and laws in contempt, and SS men aspired to be the very antithesis of cautious bureaucrats, resistance to the Holocaust often made use of bureaucratic forms, some officials using labyrinthine rules to avoid handing over Jews, issuing false papers and stamping exit visas until forcibly stopped (Lozowick 2001). But alluring fictions are not invalidated by divergence from reality. Arendt herself observed with respect to the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion that at a certain point it becomes more important to ask why people

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believe them than to continue mustering evidence proving their forgery. By now it is the resistance of Arendt’s fiction to multiple attempts upon its life that begs to be understood. What is the appeal of her story? By narratively linking a world catastrophe with one individual’s descent into evil, and identifying that descent with an inability to think, Arendt took up one of the oldest tropes of Western literature.13 Yet to move from her book to the trial documents themselves is to be disturbed by details she spares her readers. Arendt’s “clown” entertains by his very imperviousness to reality. The Eichmann who appears in the trial testimony evokes nausea and anxiety. (A reader returning to those documents finds it oddly impossible to keep the full horror, not only of the slaughter but of the cunning deceit and betrayal, in mind.) A perspective that denies evil any status as a power set over against individuals, identifying it instead as an absence of individual cognitive virtue, scales the problem of evil in a reassuring way–​implies that it can be resisted and, at least, the individual “saved” from incurring guilt by “thinking.” Readings of Arendt that stress the failure of ordinary people to think independently meld with a simplistic “mass psychology” as well as with psychologizing trends in theology that treat the devil as a “symbol” of psychological forces within every individual. In fact, the most common academic misreading of Arendt (insofar as she explicitly repudiated it) is the claim that she demonstrated a “potential for committing genocide … in each of us” (Waller 2007, 98–​127). Yet it is precisely the power of evil as a social fact, extrinsic to individuals and their cognitive capacities, that the Holocaust presses upon us. Arendt’s depiction of a “normal” functionary invites readers to connect her tale to their own everyday frustrations with officials whose potential evil, given the right circumstances, thereby appears to stand revealed. Such associations provide a phantom backdrop to lived experiences that, in turn, seem to confirm her vision. Arendt’s very insistence on separating evil from “wicked” –​or even “humanly understandable” – motives has encouraged some scholars to treat such unplanned outcomes of social arrangements as global poverty, or an “obesity epidemic” as examples of the “banality of evil.” But in our time of explicit calls for genocide and proudly publicized atrocities, Arendt is best invoked with respect for the particular problem she addressed, as well as with a strong caveat. To craft a compelling moral tale, Arendt turned her back on two axioms of sound social science. To understand human action it is necessary to inquire into the “thinking” of its agents (who must not, therefore, be identified as “thoughtless”). And thinking itself takes place in social relationships and collectively structured situations. Once the social locus of thinking is thoroughly accepted, attempts to distinguish agents of evil from those who resist it as distinctive human types lose cogency.

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Thinking about Thinking “Thinking” is the leitmotif of Arendt’s reflections on Eichmann. Her own thinking about thinking took place in identification, correspondence and conversation with the mentors of her youth, Heidegger and Jaspers. Like other Germans of her generation, Arendt believed in purity and masters and identified honor with loyalty. In 1950 she took the initiative of reestablishing contact with Heidegger (broken in 1933), to whom she had come as a young student “to learn thinking,” and in renewed fidelity to whom she sought continuity in her life as an émigré (Arendt and Heidegger 2004, 3–​42, 149, 151). For a period beginning more than a decade before she began work on the Eichmann book, and lasting until the end of her life, as she continued to explicate the conception of thinking implicit in it, Arendt was rereading Heidegger’s writings, supervising their translation, working to rehabilitate his reputation and seeking his response to her ideas (Arendt and Blücher 2000, 369; Arendt and Heidegger 2004, 115–​117, 12–​124; Young-​Bruehl 1982, 443). In 1951, 1952 and 1960 Heidegger corresponded with Arendt about his lecture series “What Is Thinking?” (Arendt and Heidegger 2004, 104,108,112,123–​124,137). The last book Arendt published before her death (1978) repeatedly cites Heidegger not only as an authority on thinking, but as its exemplar. After a brief postwar period of unqualified rejection of Heidegger’s brand of German Romanticism, during which she indicted him for “doing his utmost to supply the Nazis with ideas,” and showed clear-​sighted insight into the social nature of all thinking ([1946b] 1994; [1946c] 1994, 186–​187, 201),14 Arendt was drawn to return –​both to the man, and to conceptions of thinking imbibed under his influence. In 1930 that conception had led her to idealize “absolute solitude” and to reject sociological investigations of ideology, claiming “the spirit transcends every particular reality” ([1930a] 1990, 198, 202, 204). Another name for spirit of that description is psychosis. The collective psychoses of the Nazi period delivered a sobering shock, and Arendt’s essays of the immediate postwar years are free of such windy Romanticism. But shocks wear off, and despite her denials of homesickness (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 66), the “power of the impulse” to return became irresistible (Arendt and Heidegger 2004, 56, 61–​62). By 1958 Arendt was describing thinking as “being together with oneself,” in contrast to action, involving being together with others (Young-​Bruehl 1982, 326).15 Arendt’s formal expositions on “thinking” throw its place in her Eichmann story into relief. Ideas she claimed to have arrived at because of the trial ([1971] 1978, 3–​4) predate it. Her enduring ideal of Selbstdenken, solitary dialogue with the self, accomplished in withdrawal from the “world” and capable of “saving” the thinker from evil, owes everything to her philosophical

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mentors. But this ideal is rooted in conceptions of thinking, and of its pertinence to the problem Arendt was seeking to understand, that social scientists must reject. No understanding of mass murder is possible while declaring its planners incapable of “knowing” what they are doing. And declaring them so evades the most discomforting implications of human plurality. For underlying this declaration is an assumption that authentic thinking will yield moral consensus with respect to what the declarer takes to be extreme evil. Arendt may have been led to this position by philosophical immersion in Socratic and Augustinian assertions that only the good can be an object of thought, but such an esoteric understanding of thinking, however intriguing for philosophers of a certain tradition, is incompatible with sound social science. As soon as Arendt reestablished contact with Heidegger, he wrote her, “I never understood what you mean by the phrase ‘radical evil’ ” (Arendt and Heidegger 2004, 74–​76). Heidegger’s prevaricating refusals to engage in “dialogue” about his Nazi past, to the consternation of Arendt and others, nonplussed by the impotence of “Logos” to reestablish moral consensus, even on gas chambers, should have shaken her faith (Arendt and Blücher 2000, 154; Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 48, 141, 161–​162, 167–​168, 630; Heidegger and Jaspers 2003, 197, 200–​201; Wolin 1993, 160–​164). In moments of clarity Arendt did declare that Heidegger and other intellectuals were trapped by the “ideas” they invented (1964b). But even as she professed wariness of intellectuals, she was unprepared to accept that thinking, born of different social worlds, will reliably make one group’s “good” another’s “evil.” As Baehr has observed, Arendt was unwilling to accept the implications of a fundamental axiom of social science (2013, 13,22). Arendt and Jaspers once agreed that Heidegger was “one of the few professors” who “contributed to putting National Socialism into the saddle” (Arendt [1946b] 1994, 201–​202; Heidegger and Jaspers 2003, 210; Wolin 1993, 160). Writing to the German Ministry of Education as early as 1929 to call for the “extermination” of Jewish influences on the German spirit, in 1933–​1934, Heidegger enforced anti-​Jewish decrees in his university, championed “ethnic science” and warned students and faculty against “humanizing ideas” and “never-​ending rational analysis.” He reproduced anti-​Semitic clichés in writings intended for publication as late as 1950 –​the year Arendt reestablished contact and began overseeing preparation of his work for the English-​speaking market (Wolin 1993, 29–​60). In the 1940s, before she reestablished contact, Arendt had recognized that Heidegger’s “dishonesty” had “crept into his philosophizing” (Arendt [1946b] 1994, 201; Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 142). Her later public reassessment of his thinking as uncontaminated by Nazism, save for a short “escapade” during which he became “lost” in “the world” and from which he learned better

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(Arendt and Heidegger 2004, 160), has proved as vulnerable to subsequent scrutiny as her portrait of Eichmann. The evocation of a thoughtless “clown” in Eichmann in Jerusalem may have been fueled by diverted contempt for an ambivalently beloved (shamed, evasive, seductive and unrepentant) teacher. Certainly Arendt’s portrait of the “humorless,” “helpless” “idealist” with a penchant for “elating cliché,” lacking in criminal motives but ridiculously eager to “coordinate himself,”16 is more convincing as a portrait of the professor than of the SS-​ Obersturmbannführer. In 1949, weakly defending Heidegger to Jaspers, she wrote: “What you call impurity I would call lack of character –​but in the sense that he literally has none and certainly not a particularly bad one.” Two years later: “He really doesn’t know …what the devil drove him into what he did” (Arendt and Jaspers 1993, 142, 167–​168).17 Is Arendt’s satirical portrait a composite? Was this one of the reasons for her euphoric sense of release upon its completion? But that is a subject for a branch of social science investigating how objects of youthful attachment become inseparable from the self, live on in mind and–​through processes of splitting and displacement –​ find covert expression in thought. Good stories thrive on figurative expressions. But sometimes it is crucial to preserve literal and common usage. Arendt’s identification of Eichmann as “thoughtless” abuses the very word required to understand the evil wreaked upon his victims. Thus Levi: “If I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image which is familiar to me: the emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is seen” ([1958] 1996, 90). And Améry: “In the camp the intellect in its totality declared itself to be incompetent. … It abandoned us” (1980, 15,19,20).In the most literal sense of the word it was not Eichmann and his ilk, but those they crushed, who were rendered “thoughtless.”

No Time to Think: Common Processes, Different Outcomes Conventional morality tales distinguish habits of mind that differentiate perpetrators of evil from those who resist it. Hence, denigrations of unquestioning obedience and ignoble motivations; depictions of evildoers as people who do not think; scorn for those who delegate moral judgment to an authority or group, and for bystanders who feign not to notice what is taking place under their very noses. But if we attend to the testimonies of the few people who effectively sabotaged Nazi intents by rescuing strangers, often at the risk of their own and their families’ lives, all these motifs become problematic. Their dominant refrain is “There was no time to think!” They cannot remember

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any moment of deciding to participate in rescue efforts, and show impatience or even incomprehension when questioned about their “thinking.” Rescue actions were not the outcome of solitary “inner dialogue,” with conscience as its by-​product. And unquestioning obedience to authority, acquiescence with what others expected, care not to know too much, even calculations of monetary gain, all played as indispensable a role in the subversion of mass murder as in its perpetration. Asked to explain why they endangered their families’ lives to save strangers, rescuers stress that they did it without forethought, because it was “natural” and “necessary,” and refer immediately to “close” relationships. I’ve been asked why my mother and I did these things. I never asked myself that question. …We never questioned the premise, as if this was a tradition in the family. (Land-​Weber 2000, 37) There was a network in the underground that brought people to us; I didn’t understand how it worked and was never interested either. After all … the less I knew the better. (Land-​Weber 2000, 70) This was the particular strength of Westerweel. When he went to a house to ask if they would take a boy or a girl, he never came back with a no. We were a very close group. (Land-​Weber 2000, 117) It was like being in a cage with vicious dogs. I never had time to analyze why I did these things. …I knew that more people should have been helping, but I realize that others may not have had as much … help as I had. (Land-​Weber 2000, 227)

Philip Hallie’s interviews with villagers of Le Chambon, France, for a time the safest place for fugitives in all Nazi-​occupied Europe, afford the same picture. “We had no time to engage in deep debates. We had to help them.”…When I asked her why she found it necessary to let those refugees into her house …she could never fully understand what I was getting at. (Hallie 1979, 127) Once when I asked her to tell me her feelings about the danger of arrest and deportation, she said, “The Trocmes [the Pastor and his wife]…wanted to help people in need by any means possible. …Whatever they asked for was just what my conscience would want. Why–​I just could not have done anything else.” (Hallie 1979, 180) I have asked him why … he chose to put himself in very great danger. … His response was typical. … “It was not reasonable. But you know I had to do it anyway.” There is no man I have ever met who is so reluctant to use the language of moral judgment, words like “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “evil.” (Hallie 1979, 233)

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As Hallie came to recognize, the “Good” that happened in Le Chambon was not simply an inward condition of mind of its residents. There is a social ecology of good and evil that contemporary scholarship is making progress in fleshing out. Upon being questioned afterward, people who resist genocide are as apt as those who commit it to claim they were just doing their job, or doing what some moral authority, or people they couldn’t refuse, expected of them. They do not stress their “independence.” And they virtually never act alone. It has been estimated that the rescue of one Jew required the cooperation of at least 14 to 15 people. Sometimes only a married couple, or parent and adult child working together, accomplished a rescue, but typically the solidarity of a large network was required. And just as crucial as solidarity and trust between those actively involved in a rescue was the passive support of bystanders who feigned not to notice what was going on. Subversion of mass murder, like participation in it, can be traced to “humanly understandable motives,” and in both cases these motives are often mixed. Not all rescuers were motivated by pure altruism any more than all killers by pure sadism, fanatical anti-​Semitism or greed. Some people, including superiors of convents, demanded large sums of money in exchange for sheltering a child, or continued to hide one from a family searching for it after the war. There remains some room for the “independent thinker” Arendt idealized in efforts to understand courageous behavior in an evil time. But upon close examination, even apparent isolates act in ways they experience as “natural” and “necessary” because the “thinking” supporting their action is embedded in habit, tradition (if only of a family), and social relationship (if only with their god).

Conclusion To read Eichmann in Jerusalem more than a half century after first publication prods several observations. In part due to limitations of evidence available at the time of writing, Arendt’s portrait of Eichmann is not a credible likeness. Eichmann behaved as a sadistic, ruthlessly cunning, fanatical anti-​Semite. Helpless bureaucrat was but one of the roles he adeptly played when it seemed to his advantage. And he was interested in “thinking.” After rejecting the god of the Bible as “too small” and “Jewish” for the “bigger god” of an ethnic state, he took pains to align himself with reference to some of the very same philosophers Arendt exalted as guides: Socrates, Kant, Heidegger (Stangneth 2014, 167, 221, 265). Far from exhibiting ease of “moral conversion,” Eichmann took care never to implicate any living associate in his trial testimony, and never rejected the ideals he fanatically (for him a word of approbation) served. There is progress in social science. Current scholarship on the Shoah and other genocides has become more conceptually sophisticated, not only in

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comparison to this book of Arendt’s, but also in comparison to other social science efforts of her time, preoccupied as they were with laboratory-​induced obedience, or conceptions of an authoritarian personality, of national character and of mass society. Contemporary scholars, focusing on the diversity of motives and situational norms governing mass murder, crimes against humanity and collective denial take ideology seriously, stress the importance of local history, institutions and subcultures, examine socialization to killing “careers” and devote particular attention to the role of moral authorities (Brannigan 2013; Mann 2005; Osiel 2002; 2009). But it is striking how much of this new work continues to engage with Arendt. The resilient vitality of Arendt’s Report on the Banality of Evil is a reminder of the positive role fictive constructions have sometimes played in the history of the social sciences. With vivid characters, attention-​arresting action and artful phrasing, a story achieving the status of myth lodges in public memory, marking out a landscape for the further play of thought. Arendt, motivated to counter one myth (of superhuman satanic greatness), created another. And for decades, even scholars anxious to rebut her claims have pitched their tents with reference to her banner. The very “tone” of her work, an “act of aggression” without pretensions to detachment, has proved a source of enduring power. Gripping literature is driven by efforts to untie, rather than cut, life’s Gordian knots. Arendt’s masterpiece, with its leitmotif of thinking, was her own passionate response to profound betrayal. By virtue of narrative strengths sometimes tantamount to social science flaws, it continues to inspire more good social science than most social science of her time. If one measure of a good story is that it gives rise to further stories, hers is one of the best to have circulated in late twentieth-​century social science. But social scientists continuing to draw inspiration from this tale should part company with Arendt when – to address the problem whose universal significance she urges upon us – she drafts a portrait of a “social type” distinguished by cognitive incapacity, however such incapacity be understood. The way ahead does not lie in this direction. And as new narratives are drafted to grapple with the problem she defined, Eichmann in Jerusalem reminds us that for a host of reasons, some explored in this chapter, narrative arts necessary for grasping reality also compete with it.

Notes 1 For a full account of Eichmann’s writings before capture, see Stangneth (2014). 2 “I hate, am afraid of, pity, always have been.” Arendt to McCarthy, 22 November 1970 (Arendt and McCarthy 1995, 270). 3 On plunder accompanying genocide, see Aly (2007); Gensburger (2013); Gross and Gross (2012); Safrian (2010, 212).

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4 Augustine, Confessions, VII [V]‌7; City of God, XI, chap. 9. 5 “What troubled me most in dealing with him [the terrorist] was not his monstrosity but his banality.” “The most terrifying reflection … is that all these people are not the product of the exceptional but … of the normality of their place, and time” (Conrad 1926, ix–​x). 6 Arendt, Heidegger and Jaspers frequently echo one another. Arendt first wrote of the “fabrication of corpses” in 1945 ([1945a]1994; [1948a] 1994, 215; 1951b, 433). Heidegger took up the phrase in 1949 (Faye 2009, 304). 7 When David Riesman asked Arendt if she didn’t consider herself a liberal, she answered, “No, a radical” (Bruehl-​Young 1982, 256). See also Arendt (1996, 178; Arendt and Heidigger 2004, 15). 8 “It was the stupidity that was so horrendous. And that’s what I  had in mind when I spoke of banality” (1964 interview with Joachim Fest [Arendt 2013, 7]). 9 “I never understood mercy killing as murder. … My life was one of dedication and self-​ sacrifice.” Nurse who gave lethal injections (Lower 2013, 153). 10 Eichmann’s defense attorney:  “Killing by gassing … belongs to the medical sphere, inasmuch as it is prepared by members of the medical profession.” (State of Israel, The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings 1994, vol. V Session 114, 2051). 11 See Nirenberg (2013). 12 Eichmann: “An SS man was expected to be hard on himself and others. …New catchwords always caught on. For a long time it was ‘Härte! Härte!’ [hardness, cruelty]” (Lang 1983, 157). 13 “In short, I began to think, and to think is one real Advance from Hell to Heaven; all that Hellish harden’d state and temper of Soul … is but a deprivation of Thought; he that is restor’d to his Power of thinking, is restor’d to himself.” Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders ([1722] 1971, 281). 14 In 1946, rejecting Heidegger’s “egotism” and “grandiosity” and expressing hope that he would be the “last romantic,” Arendt wrote: “Existence itself is, by its very nature, never isolated. It exists only in communication.” “[M]‌an … is more than a Self ” ([1946c] 1994, 186–​187). 15 Arendt described thinking this way in a grant application to the Rockefeller Foundation, and in The Human Condition (Young-​Bruehl 1982, 326). In the same year, though Jaspers identified thinking as a practice between men, and insisted that his marriage was decisive for his philosophizing (Heidegger and Jaspers 2003, 162), Arendt praised Jaspers’ “inviolable” solitude, stating, “He always stood entirely alone and was independent of all groupings” ([1958b] 1968, 76). 16 As rector of Freiburg University Heidegger was responsible for Gleichschaltung–​ “imperative coordination” with policies of the Reich. 17 See Jaspers’ attempted conciliatory letter to Heidegger: “[Y]‌ou seemed …toward the manifestations of National Socialism like a boy…who doesn’t know what he is doing, who … gets mixed up in an undertaking that looks to him like something completely different than what it is in reality” (Heidegger and Jaspers [1950] 2003, 186).

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—​—​—​. (1971) 1978. The Life of the Mind (2 vols.) Volume I: Thinking. New York: Harcourt Brace. —​—​—​. 1996. Love and Saint Augustine, edited by Joanna Scott and Judith C. Stark. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 2013. “Eichmann war von empörender Dummheit” (1964 interview with Joachim Fest). Gespräche und Briefe. Munich: Piper. Arendt, Hannah and Heinrich Blücher. 2000. Within Four Walls: The Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–​1968. New York: Harcourt Brace. Arendt, Hannah and Martin Heidegger. 2004. Letters 1925–​1975, edited by Ursula Ludz. New York: Harcourt. Arendt, Hannah and Karl Jaspers. 1993. Correspondence 1926–​1969, edited by Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner. New York: Harcourt Brace. Arendt, Hannah and Mary McCarthy. 1995. Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949–​1975, edited by Carol Brightman. New York: Harcourt Brace. Baehr, Peter. 2010b. “Hannah Arendt’s Indictment of Social Science.” In Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Social Sciences, 10–​34. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. —​—​—​. 2013. “The Problem of ‘Unmasking’ in ‘Ideology and Utopia’: Karl Mannheim, Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt.” Sociologica 1: 1–​31. Bender, Sara. 2008. The Jews of Bialystok During World War II and the Holocaust. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press. Bilsky, Leora. 2001. “Between Justice and Politics: The Competition of Story-​tellers in the Eichmann Trial.” In Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem, edited by Steven Aschheim, 232–​252. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brannigan, Augustine. 2013. Beyond the Banality of Evil:  Criminology and Genocide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Browning, Christopher. 1992. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Collins. —​—​—​. 2004. The Origins of the Final Solution:  the Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–​March 1942. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. —​—​—​. 2010. “Postwar Investigations and Trials in Germany.” In Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp. 270–​290. New York: Norton. Cesarani, David. 2004. Becoming Eichmann:  Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk Murderer.” Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Conrad, Joseph. 1926. “Author’s Note.”Under Western Eyes, vii–​x. New York: Doubleday. Defoe, Daniel. (1722)1971. Moll Flanders. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Faye, Emmanuel. 2009. Heidegger:  The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Friedlander, Saul. 1969. Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good. New York: Knopf. —​—​—​. 2007. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–​1945. New York: Harper Collins. Fritzsche, Peter. 2008. Life and Death in the Third Reich. London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Fulbrook, Mary. 2013. A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press. Gensburger, Sarah. 2013. “The Banality of Robbing the Jews.” New  York Times, 15 November 2013. Online:  http://​www.nytimes.com/​2013/​11/​16/​opinion/​sunday/​ the-​banality-​of-​robbing-​the-​jews.html?_​r=0 (accessed 14 December 2014). Gerlach, Christian. 2001. “The Eichmann Interrogations in Holocaust Historiography.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15(3): 428–​452.

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Goldhagen, Daniel. 1996. Hitler’s Willing Executioners:  Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Alfred Knopf. Gross, Jan. 2001. Neighbors:  The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gross, Jan and Irena Gross. 2012. Golden Harvest:  Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hallie, Philip P. 1979. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There. New York: Harper and Row. Heidegger, Martin and Karl Jaspers. 2003. The Heidegger–​Jaspers Correspondence (1920–​1963), edited by Walter Biemel and Hans Saner. New York: Humanity Books. Hilberg, Raul. 1961. The Destruction of The European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. —​—​—​. 1992. Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933–​1945. New York: Harper Collins. —​—​—​. 1996. The Politics of Memory. Chicago: Ivan Dee. —​—​—​. 2001. “Style.”In Sources of Holocaust Research: An Analysis, 72–​132. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. Hilberg, Raul and Stanislaw Staron. 1979 (1968). “Introduction.” In The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, edited by Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron and Josef Kermisz, 25–​70. New York: Stein and Day. Hughes, Everett C. (1962) 1971. “Good People and Dirty Work.”In The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers, 87–​97. Chicago: Aldine. Jensen, Olaf and Claus-​Christian Szejnmann (eds.) 2008. Ordinary People as Mass Murderers: Perpetrators in Comparative Perspective. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Land-​Weber, Ellen. 2000. To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lang, Jochen von (ed.) 1983. Eichmann Interrogated:  Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police. New York: Straus & Giroux. Langbein, Hermann. 2004. People in Auschwitz. Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press. Lanzmann, Claude. 1975. Interview with Benjamin Murmelstein. Online:http://​www.ushmm. org/​online/​film/​display/​detail.php?file_​num=4742 (accessed 23 December 2014). Laqueur, Walter. 2001. “The Arendt Cult: Hannah Arendt as Political Commentator.” In Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem, edited by Steven Aschheim, 47–​64. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lawson, Tom. 2010. Debates on the Holocaust. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Levi, Primo. (1958) 1996. Survival in Auschwitz:  The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New  York: Simon and Schuster. —​—​—​. 1988. “The Grey Zone.”In The Drowned and the Saved, 36–​69. New York: Random House. Life Magazine. 1960. “The Editors of Life Present a Major Historical Document: Eichmann Tells His Own Damning Story.” Life Magazine 49(22):19–​25; 49(23): 146–​61. Lipstadt, Deborah E. 2011. The Eichmann Trial. New York: Schocken. Lower, Wendy. 2013. Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Lozowick, Yaacov. 2000. Hitler’s Bureaucrats: The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil. New York: Continuum. —​—​—​. 2001. “Malicious Clerks: The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil.” In Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem, edited by Steven Aschheim, 214–​223. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Mann, Michael. 2005. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Michaelis-​ Stern, Eva. 1968. “Tragtihnmit Stolz, den gelben Fleck!” In Die Kontroverse: Hannah Arendt, Eichmann und die Juden, edited by F. A. Krummacher, 152–​60. Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung. Mikhman, Dan. 2003. Holocaust Historiography:  A  Jewish Perspective:  Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches and Fundamental Issues. London: Vallentine Mitchell. Nirenberg, David. 2013. Anti-​Judaism: The Western Tradition. New York: W.W. Norton. Osiel, Mark J. 2002. Mass Atrocity, Ordinary Evil and Hannah Arendt: Criminal Consciousness in Argentina’s Dirty War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. —​—​—​. 2009. Making Sense of Mass Atrocity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poliakov, Léon. 1951. Bréviaire de la Haine: Le troisième Reich et les juifs. Paris: Calmann-​Lévy. Reitlinger, Gerald. 1953. The Final Solution. New York: Beechhurst Press. Safrian, Hans. 2010. Eichmann’s Men. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scholem, Gershom. 1978. “Letter, 23 June 1962.”In Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, edited by Ron Feldman, 240–​245. New York: Grove Press. Schluessler, Jennifer. 2014. “Book Portrays Eichmann as Evil, but Not Banal.”New  York Times 2 September 2014. Online:http://​www.nytimes.com/​2014/​09/​03/​books/​book-​ portrays-​eichmann-​as-​evil-​but-​not-​banal.html?r=0 (accessed 23 December 2014). Stangneth, Bettina. 2014. Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. New York: Alfred Knopf. State of Israel Ministry of Justice, Jerusalem. 1994. The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem (8 vols.).Online: http://​www.nizkor.org/​hweb/​ people/​e/​eichmann-​adolf/​transcripts/​Sessions/​ (accessed 23 December 2014). Trunk, Isaiah. 1972. Judenrat:  The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation. New York: Macmillan. Waller, James E. 2007. Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolin, Richard (ed.) 1993. The Heidegger Controversy:  A  Critical Reader. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Young-​Bruehl, Elizabeth. 1982. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Chapter 4 “THE PERPLEXITIES OF BEGINNING”: HANNAH ARENDT’S THEORY OF REVOLUTION Daniel Gordon

Introduction “The perplexities of beginning” is a phrase from Arendt’s book On Revolution (1963g, 208). The term captures her interest in revolution as an expression of the unique nature of humankind, of the specifically human capacity to make a new beginning. As an exploration of human nature, Arendt’s work is philosophical. But it is also political. For all revolutionaries, according to Arendt, confront a challenge that spans politics and philosophy: How can they be founders who create a new order, without limiting the freedom of citizens in the future to choose their own order? What makes being a founder liberating for anyone other than the founders themselves? These questions are “the perplexities of beginning.” Such concerns, which are internal to the idea of revolution, distinguish Arendt’s thinking from that of sociologists. For sociologists generally analyze the structural causes of revolution, not what lends integrity to the very concept of revolution. In this chapter, I seek to achieve three things having to do with Arendt’s theory of revolution. The first is to provide an account of how On Revolution fits into Arendt’s thought. The book is not only philosophical; it is essential for understanding her entire philosophy. I employ a device that allows us to comprehend Arendt’s intellectual profile while avoiding the need to explore all of her writings. This shortcut is to focus on the year 1963, the year Arendt published both On Revolution and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The first book, dealing with democracy, plus the second, relating to Nazism, provide ample exposure to the two poles of Arendt’s thinking: that dealing with totalitarianism, and that dealing with liberty. Students can attain

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a wide-​angle view of Arendt as a thinker by appreciating On Revolution in its annual context. The second task is to provide a summary of key ideas in On Revolution, with a special emphasis on her critique of social science. For Arendt, the social sciences, and especially sociology, reflect a broader phenomenon: the impact of the idea of “the social” throughout modern culture. Arendt believed that sociology grinds down the image of humanity by affirming that thinking is secondary to a more important reality, the field of social forces, which allegedly structures the individual’s experience. Arendt’s critique of “the social” was not just a response to Marxist scholars whose interpretations of revolution rested on economics and class analysis. Hers was a critique of some of the modern revolutions themselves:  specifically, the French Revolution of 1789 and the communist revolutions it inspired later. Arendt argued that the revolutionaries in France fatally embraced the category of the social by committing themselves to eliminating poverty. The French Revolution subordinated the task of building a constitution to the militant quest for social restructuring. The French Revolution thus undermined its own liberating potential and bequeathed a flawed revolutionary script to subsequent revolutionaries around the world. The third aim is to delineate how the book was received when it was published and to assess how it ought to be received today, especially by students of sociology. Critics claimed that Arendt lacked empirical knowledge of revolutions, that her book was saturated with historical errors. I argue that this was a case in which a theoretical text surpassed in wisdom the specialists delegated to assess it. The failure to appreciate Arendt’s thought is evident from the lack of serious engagement, in any of the critical reviews that appeared in the early 1960s, with the large questions Arendt posed in her book. Arendt produced a classic, not in the sense that the work is famous. For on account of the bad reviews the book initially received, it fell into neglect. On Revolution is a classic in the sense that, if one actually reads the book today without a disciplinary bias, the text elevates one intellectually. It generates an excitement about the revolutionary spirit that up-​to-​date scholarship rarely inspires.

1963: The Most Creative Period in Arendt’s Career In 1963, Arendt published two books. Eichmann in Jerusalem:  A  Report on the Banality of Evil was about the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann for crimes against humanity. The text immediately reached a wide audience because it was printed serially in The New Yorker before coming out as a book. It remains a model of journalism that rises to the level of serious political theory. In contrast, On Revolution never arrived in the public sphere. Academics reviewed

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it negatively in specialized journals, and the book fell into obscurity. In spite of this neglect, understanding On Revolution is a prerequisite for attaining a wide view of Arendt’s thinking. It is her most democratic work. It conveys the hopefulness of a thinker generally known for her emphasis on the catastrophic in modern history. In one year, Arendt issued two remarkable books that articulate the two poles of modernity as she understood it: Nazism versus democracy. One could also describe these two poles as genocide (the destruction of a people) versus revolution (the founding of a people). There are more possibilities, but the two texts of 1963 comprise a miniature oeuvre that brilliantly juxtaposes the most transformative impulses in modern political culture. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt argued that the high-​ranking Nazi who organized the logistics of the Final Solution harbored no animosity toward Jews. Arendt claimed that Eichmann did not think ill of the Jews; he was simply unable to think at all: [H]‌e was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. … The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely to think from the standpoint of someone else. ([1963b] 1994, 48)

Eichmann dutifully implemented the regime’s policies. He did not see political service as a vocation that involves moral reflection. Decency and conscience he did possess, but he practiced the virtues in his private life, with family and friends. The concept of “the banality of evil” that figures in the book’s full title has always been controversial. The term refers to a regime in which evil does not result from the vicious intentions of the perpetrators. The banality of evil is the evaporation of moral deliberation in politics. In Germany, the young Hannah Arendt had written her doctoral dissertation on Saint Augustine. Augustine wished to avoid dualism–​that is, the kind of worldview that acknowledges the existence of powerful demonic forces competing against God’s goodness. Augustine reasoned that evil is the privation of good, rather than an anti-​ spiritual power in its own right. Evil is the space in our lives that God does not fill, just as darkness is the absence of light. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? (Augustine 1887)

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Along the same lines, Arendt suggested that evil in modern politics was the draining of critical reflection from the public sphere. She turned Eichmann into a symbol of this void. When Arendt first published Eichmann in Jerusalem, some reviewers denounced her for ignoring the importance of anti-​Semitic hatred in breeding Nazi policies. Arendt also aroused anger by suggesting that the Jews could have done more to resist the Final Solution. For her, the absence of Jewish resistance was a privation, a lack of courage, that compounded the privation, or incapacity to think, of Nazis like Eichmann. The criticisms of Arendt for understating the role of anti-​Semitism and overstating the passivity of the Jews have merit. But scholars have also long acknowledged that the banality of evil is a compelling moral concept. In 1963, Arendt was already well known for her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951. Some reviewers of Eichmann in Jerusalem confirmed her eminence as one of the most creative commentators on the twisted history of the twentieth century. And the book remains standard reading about Nazi Germany precisely because it raises acute and debatable moral questions.1 Viewers of the recent film Hannah Arendt will observe that the story, set in the early 1960s, revolves entirely around Arendt’s work on Eichmann in Jerusalem and the controversies it generated. The film offers no hint that Arendt, at the same time, was trying to articulate what she regarded as the positive side of modernity: democratic revolution and constitutionalism. We need to examine On Revolution to get a balanced view of Arendt’s conception of modernity.

Arendt’s Concepts of Modernity and Revolution Arendt’s intellectual mission was to energize the life of her readers by representing our world as modern; that is, as a set of unprecedented ideas competing for our allegiance, requiring us to make choices that our predecessors did not have to make. As Baehr (2002) has shown, Arendt believed that too much sociological thinking occurred by way of analogy, leading one to presume that everything that has happened recently has happened before; inducing one to assume that life is cyclical, that a “model” will explain a new event as the recurrence of an old law. As a result of this thinking by analogy, one never recognizes the edge of one’s existence. Arendt aimed to make readers sensitive to the burgeoning of novel predicaments and possibilities within the present. What Arendt found promising about revolutions is that they aim to eliminate cyclical time and to install linear time once and for all. Revolutions seek to create cultures in which not only the revolutionaries but also their heirs live on the brink, with a sense of an unprecedented present. Arendt argued that

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this modern way of thinking about historical time originated in the eighteenth century. An insightful portion of On Revolution is devoted to analyzing the significance of the word “revolution.” Before the eighteenth century, it evoked circularity and restoration: to revolve. The American and French Revolutions were modern because they invented “the notion that the course of history suddenly begins anew” (1963g, 21, 28, 34–​36). It is worth noting that Arendt’s concept of “modernity,” as concerns its evil or totalitarian side, is grounded in the twentieth century. But her vision of modernity, in its liberating side, stretches back to 1776. Serious students of Arendt are generally familiar with the fact that she admired ancient Greek democracy. It is true that she saw Nazism as an inversion of the Greek respect for ethical reasoning in politics, captured in Aristotle’s vision of politics as the process of collectively deliberating about what is right and wrong. But there is more to Arendt’s democratic thinking than nostalgia for the ancient polis. On Revolution demonstrates how modern revolutions affirm freedom in a universal manner the ancients never dreamed of. More precisely, modern revolutionaries took the humanistic idea that the individual has a “faculty to begin something new” (Arendt 1963g, 27) and folded it into a vision of humanity continuously remaking itself through political action. A revolution is a new beginning, not just for the revolutionary, but for others, for posterity. It was only in the course of the eighteenth-​century revolutions that men began to be aware that a new beginning could be a political phenomenon, that it could be the result of what men had done and what they could consciously set out to do. … The novus ordo saeclorum was no longer a blessing given by the “grand scheme and design in providence,” and novelty was no longer the proud, and at the same time, frightening possession of the few. When newness had reached the marketplace, it became the beginning of a new story, started–​ though unwittingly–​by acting men, to be enacted further, to be augmented and spun out by their posterity. (40)

Revolution, as Arendt understood it, is an effort to create a perpetually dynamic political sphere:  a constitutional democracy flexible enough to be amended by citizens over and over, so that each generation can reinterpret liberty and define its aspirations anew. We will see that she regarded the American Revolution as the best approximation of this ideal. Arendt believed that the fate of modernity hinged on its capacity to sustain the revolutionary enterprise. She viewed no other vision of modernity, beyond the revolutionary and democratic one, as ethical. She was completely unsupportive of the commercial idea of modernity: modernity as economic growth and technological advancement, yielding longevity and happiness.

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Her critique of this cluster of values, which she referred to as “the social,” is most extensive in her book The Human Condition. But it is also a theme of On Revolution. Most of us would use the term “social welfare” or “social justice” rather than speak of “the social” as if it were a noun. But Arendt spoke of “the social” as if it were a thing in order to underscore the omnipresence of a modern discourse. The term “social” has become so widespread that we rarely recognize its power, rarely sort it out for critical examination. The word is frequently added, as if it were an innocent prefix, to simplify complex concepts such as welfare and justice. The result, according to Arendt, is to cheapen these values and promote private felicity at the expense of public freedom and responsibility.

Three Key Themes in On Revolution Philosophy versus sociology Arendt sometimes denied that she was a philosopher (Arendt [1964d] 2000, 3–​4), but that is because she understood the word philosophy in medieval terms, as the effort to find truths outside of time. She preferred to think of herself as a student of politics, of what occurs in time. To the extent that Arendt subscribed to an essential definition of human nature, it was that humans are political. This means we must comprehend humans in relation to the political space or regime in which they act, which in turn means that philosophy must direct itself toward the history of political change. In spite of this abstract commitment to historicity and the political, Arendt’s work was remarkably philosophical compared to how history and political science were generally practiced in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. For she focused on what is possible for humans to achieve in a revolutionary moment; she did not seek to reconstruct in detail the actual history of revolutions. She described the American and French Revolutions with some precision, to be sure. The footnotes reveal that she was widely read in the primary and secondary literatures about these events. But what she wished to convey was a set of judgments; for example, that the American revolutionaries understood that any rebellion, in order to install freedom for others and not just for the revolutionaries, must culminate in a great act of constitution making. After the American Revolution, according to Arendt, “constitution-​making was never again understood as the foremost and noblest of all revolutionary deeds” (157). A further sense in which Arendt’s treatment of the subject of revolution was unusually philosophical for its time has to do with its existential character. Arendt dedicated On Revolution to philosopher Karl Jaspers and his wife,

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Gertrud, “In reverence–​in friendship–​in love.” Influenced by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Jaspers emphasized the limits of modern science and scholarly knowledge. According to him, when we engage with important personal and ethical issues, we discern limits or “borders” that the modern academic disciplines cannot traverse with us. Individuals face choices that must be confronted in the pure atmosphere of freedom. This is what Jaspers called “transcendence.” Jaspers believed that philosophy must explore this space of freedom because every other discipline, under the influence of the scientific ethos, tends to trivialize what it cannot explain, what remains undetermined. The role of philosophy is to widen the space of what cannot be established through reason alone, and to widen our sense of free will in the process (Kauffman 1975). Arendt’s preoccupation with revolution as an atmosphere of beginnings clearly grew out of her fascination with Jaspers’ concept of transcendence. She believed that academics in the twentieth century, overanalyzing the causes of revolutions, had turned revolution into an event to be assessed clinically, like any other kind of event. She believed that the scholarly community had forgotten how open-​ended the revolutionary moment is. Her critique of “the social,” mentioned earlier, included her deep concern that social science tended to deny that humans ever have the ability to exercise freedom. Thus, on the very first page of On Revolution she writes: Under the concerted assault of the modern debunking “sciences,” psychology and sociology, nothing indeed has seemed to be more safely buried than the concept of freedom. (1)

Revolution is the illustration par excellence of humankind’s potential to live with an open horizon. “What the revolutions brought to the fore was this experience of being free … the experience of man’s faculty to begin something new” (26–​27). Sociology and psychology, she stated, “degrade freedom” and risk reducing the belief in free will to a “lower-​middle class prejudice” (1–​2). For a fuller understanding of Arendt’s hostility to sociology in particular, we can turn to an article, “Philosophy and Sociology” ([1930a] 1994), that she published early in her career. Arendt believed that the leading theorists in sociology were committed to a deterministic view of humanity. The very term “sociology” implied the primacy of social forces over individual freedom. In “Philosophy and Sociology” she focused on prominent German sociologist Karl Mannheim, a pioneer in the branch of sociology known as the sociology of knowledge. According to Arendt, the problem with sociology’s effort to subsume human cognition is that it makes thought a mere consequence of

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impersonal forces: “All thought is tied to a social situation” (28). Arendt contrasts sociology to the philosophy of Jaspers, calling sociology “the opposite of philosophy” (31). Sociology brings down the “peak moments” of human existence (33). Sociology steers us away from the words and deeds of humans and requires us to make a “detour” by way of a social reality that allegedly shapes who we are (33–​36). “Sociology uncovers the determinants of thought, in which thought itself takes no interest, and suggests at the same time that thought’s passion for the absolute is simply an unacknowledged forgetting of the conditional” (36–​37). The reference to the “passion for the absolute” suggests that Arendt, in 1930, believed that all humans, anywhere, have the capacity to separate themselves from society and grasp higher truths. By the time she wrote On Revolution, however, Arendt had become preoccupied with the intellectually liberating potential of the political sphere. The mature Arendt did not claim that human thought per se is independent of external conditioning. She was dedicated to the thesis that we are capable of independent thinking in certain institutions, what she often called “spaces,” designed to sustain our autonomy as human beings. “Freedom,” she wrote in On Revolution, “has always been spatially limited” (1963g, 279). Education is one of these spheres. Arendt also believed that politics, as an area of debate and decision making, is the prime area where adults exercise freedom. Politics is “that space of appearances where freedom can unfold its charms and become a visible, tangible reality” (26). The purpose of revolution is to forge an open political and dialogical space in which the revolutionaries and their heirs can exercise free thought and action. For Arendt, sociology tends to deny freedom by treating the revolutionary moment as an ephemeral outburst of social contradictions, rather than a creative human drama that could last indefinitely. Alternatively, one can say that while sociologists wish to apply their own theories to revolution, Arendt’s book is an effort to replicate the revolutionary spirit and to extend the exhilarating atmosphere of revolution into the writing about it. The American versus the French Revolution On Revolution is largely an exploration of the American and French Revolutions. Comparing the two has been common ever since Von Gentz’s The Origins and Principles of the American Revolution Compared with the Origins and Principles of the French Revolution ([1800] 2010). Von Gentz portrayed the American Revolution as a defensive revolution because it protected American liberties against the British, and the French Revolution as an offensive revolution because its leaders aggressively sought to transform French society and waged war on other countries. To this day it is commonplace to describe the French Revolution as

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more “radical.” The French revolutionaries abolished nobility. They executed a king, Louis XVI, in 1793. They transformed culture by way of the revolutionary calendar, revolutionary theater, revolutionary clothing and revolutionary architecture. The revolutionaries even abolished slavery in 1794 (it was reinstated under Napoleon). By contrast, the American revolutionaries did not seek to level all social hierarchies. The US Constitution did not even use the terms “equality” or “equal” until the Fourteenth Amendment, added in 1868. Indeed, if one defines revolution as a transformation of the socioeconomic order, then the Civil War and not 1776 was truly the American Revolution (with Southern slave society being the old regime). Arendt understood that the French Revolution was viewed around the world as the first truly “modern” revolution, the revolution to emulate if you sought to bring down a system of social privilege. But we must recall her uncompromising critique of “the social.” We may also bear in mind that unlike the American Revolution, the communist revolutions, scripted by the French model, have generally produced massive terror: the killing of innocent people falsely accused of supporting the old order. Nor is it clear that blacks, immigrants and women are freer today in France, Soviet Russia, China and Cuba than in the United States. Arendt was struck by the contradiction between the ideals of equality and fraternity associated with leftist revolutions, on one hand, and the paranoia and terror that often resulted, on the other. According to Arendt, the French Revolution began with an affirmation of popular sovereignty, the right to self-​ government. But the Revolution soon became a rhetorical rush to show sympathy for the poor. This resulted in the “invasion of the political by the social” (1963g, 223). It became incumbent on every revolutionary leader to express commiseration for the underprivileged. The rights of man devolved into the rights of the sans-​culottes (55). The basic problem, Arendt stated, was that the French Revolution invested too much in “equality, which we, following Tocqueville’s insights, frequently see as a danger to freedom” (23). “Equally well known to antiquity was that tyrants rise to power through the support of the plain or the poor people, and that their greatest chance to keep power lies in the people’s desire for equality of condition” (14). Karl Marx would later critique the French Revolution for not eliminating poverty (56). But according to Arendt, Marx merely put a stronger accent on the concept of revolution as a socioeconomic project. The French revolutionaries were already targeting society, rather than constitutional text, as the prime object to be transformed. The effect of Marxism was simply to filter out entirely the political element from the hybrid of social and political concerns that made up the French Revolution. Marx redefined the revolutionary élan completely in social terms. “He strengthened the most pernicious

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doctrine of the modern age that the life process of society is the center of our endeavor” (58). Arendt suggested that the American Revolution ran a different course. In America, popular sovereignty did not degenerate into social sentimentalism, or what Arendt calls the “passion for compassion” (66, 79, 155). The American Revolution evolved instead into “the worshiping of the Constitution” (199). Constitution making was the ultimate act of political innovation for the Americans (142). Arendt rejected historians, such as Charles Beard, who, influenced by Marxism, portrayed the Founders as elite property owners with no interest in promoting democracy (94). The predominant thrust of American revolutionary political thought was that the people are made to exercise sovereignty. Arendt hammered out this view in her interpretation of the Constitution. She argued that the Constitution was not designed to safeguard the rights of property, or any other individual rights. It was an effort to create a new governmental space, a new public power, to be occupied by the people (146, 151). Arendt’s interpretation runs against the grain of two standard views of the Constitution. The first is that the founders tried to “balance” powers so as to avoid too much popular government. The second is that the founders wished to “limit” government in order to protect the personal liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights. One cannot say that Arendt’s understanding trumps these perspectives. But her interpretation is certainly plausible. As highly respected constitutional scholar Akhil Amar has noted, the Bill of Rights did not originally shield individual rights against all government powers. The Bill was intended to limit the federal legislature only. As the First Amendment says, “Congress shall pass no law concerning…” The intent behind limiting federal legislative power was not so much to protect individual rights as to enable the people to exercise sovereignty locally, through their state legislatures. In the early twentieth century the Supreme Court reinterpreted the Bill of Rights as guaranteeing individual rights against both local and federal governments. But according to Amar, the original Bill of Rights was about preserving majority rule against centralized oligarchy (Curtis 2000). In reality, and as Arendt recognized, the political thought of the American Founders oscillated between the poles of democracy and libertarianism, between public freedom and private happiness. Arendt highlighted the democratic element in the American Revolution because she believed that Marxist scholars had gone too far in denying the existence of any democratic impulse in the founders. Arendt feared that as a result of the sociological reduction of a political event, the American founding, to an expression of capitalism, the American people were being cheated of an inheritance. Her

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intention was to resurrect the democratic impulse that played an important role in inspiring the creation of the United States. She hoped that young people in her own time, when the civil rights movement was unfolding, would embrace the challenge of universalizing political freedom and not be diverted by projects of social reconstruction (more on Arendt and the civil rights movement later). The perplexities of beginning Arendt’s embrace of the American over the French Revolution, her preference for “liberty” over “equality,” her concern with constitutionalism over socialism–​all this appears to mark her as a conservative. It is a common theme among American conservatives to celebrate the American Revolution and to praise the exceptional character of American political culture. Yet what she celebrated in the American Revolution was not what it produced in the long run; her book contains no hint that America is a superior nation. She admired instead the Founders’ lucid engagement with the perplexities of democratic revolution: their struggle to find a way to create a new political community, while maintaining an open-​ended world for their heirs. Arendt suggested that successful revolutions have to be both radical and conservative. Revolutions are destructive because they displace the old government. They must also moderate change in order create a regime more lasting than the one they abolish (227). Revolutionaries seek to create free and durable institutions (234). The perplexity was very simple and, stated in logical terms, it seemed unsolvable:  if foundation was the aim and the end of revolution, then the revolutionary spirit was not merely the spirit of beginning something but of starting something permanent and enduring; a lasting institution, embodying this spirit and encouraging it to new achievements, would be self-​defeating. From which it unfortunately seems to follow that nothing threatens the very achievements of revolution more dangerously and more acutely than the spirit which has brought them about. Should freedom, in its most exalted sense as freedom to act, be the price to be paid for foundation? This perplexity… has haunted all revolutionary thinking. (235)

The greatness of the American Revolution, according to Arendt, was that some of its participants understood the magnitude of this perplexity. They struggled to find ways to set aside some of their own revolutionary energy for the use of future generations. The American revolutionaries “did not want to deny this privilege to their successors, but they could not very well wish to deny

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their own work” (235). The two individuals who best understood the perplexities involved were Jefferson and Madison. Jefferson was “more concerned with this perplexity than anybody else” (235). At the time of the Revolution, Jefferson envisioned an endless recurrence of bloody uprisings. He relished the idea of “an exact repetition of the whole process of action which had accompanied the course of the Revolution, and … in his earlier writings he saw this action primarily in terms of liberation, in terms of the violence that had preceded and followed the Declaration of Independence” (237). Later, however, Jefferson “was much more concerned with the constitution-​making and the establishment of a new government, that is, with those activities which by themselves constituted the space of freedom” (237). Jefferson did not participate in the Constitutional Convention because he was serving as ambassador to France. But after the Constitution was ratified, he experienced increasing anxiety over the durability of the republican spirit (233). He feared the Revolution had failed to provide lasting outlets for popular government (234). He regretted that the Constitution did not incorporate town meetings (238). He proposed the formation of elementary republics through a local ward system of government (241, 252–​253). As for Madison, he was preoccupied with how to give future generations a chance to revamp the republic. Arendt suggested that the amendability of the American Constitution is its most democratic feature, and that Madison was the leading theorist of amendability. She notes that according to Madison, the authority of the Constitution derives not from its intrinsic merits, and certainly not from any presumed personal superiority of those who wrote the text. The durability of the Constitution comes from the fact that it contains an invitation to the people to change it. Madison spoke of “successors” on whom it will be “incumbent … to improve and perpetuate” the design of the Constitution (Madison quoted by Arendt, 204). Arendt described Madison’s theory of revolution as “foundation by way of augmentation.” “Thus, the amendments to the Constitution augment and increase the original foundations of the American republic … the very authority of the American Constitution resides in its inherent capacity to be amended and augmented” (202).

Anti-​intellectual Receptions of an Antisocial Text On Revolution was reviewed favorably in the literary journal, The Sewanee Review. Here LeRoy Leatherman praised Arendt’s “reverence for language” (1964, 331) and her “elegance of mind” (334). Leatherman titled his review “Homage to the Secret-​Bearer.” Harrison E. Salisbury, a journalist with The New York Times, provided an encomium for the cover of the first edition that

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praised Arendt’s literary finesse. He praised Arendt’s “deft and flowing use of poetic and literary imagery” and described the book as “a challenge to a generation of statistics-​ and-​ quotation-​ ridden political scientists” (1964, cover).Unfortunately for Arendt, the rhapsodies of literati only confirmed the critical judgment of social scientists who viewed the book as undisciplined. Marxist historian E. J. Hobsbawm, reviewing for the journal History and Theory, observed that none of the praise for Arendt’s book featured on the cover came “from historians or sociologists” (1965, 253). Hobsbawm’s pairing of two disciplines, history and sociology, is worth commenting on. Throughout his review, Hobsbawm refers to this pair as if they are allies, committed to the scientific study of revolution and united in upholding academic standards that Arendt does not meet. According to Hobsbawm, Arendt exhibited a puerile preference for “poetic feeling over reality.” “The historian or sociologist … will be irritated, as the author plainly is not, by a certain lack of interest in mere fact” (255). Hobsbawm stated that Arendt’s interpretation of the French Revolution and its successor revolutions holds no interest “for the specialist” (253). He called the book “social prophecy” and not “social science” and declared that it “lacks the interest of rigorous logical thought” (255). He concluded his review:  “There are doubtless readers who will find Miss Arendt’s book interesting and profitable. The historical or sociological student of revolutions is unlikely to be among them” (258). As reviewers do all too often, Hobsbawm faults the author for not producing the kind of study he would have produced himself; in this case, one focusing on the class conflicts that create revolutions. He observes that any revolution “in which the social and economic element plays a major role puts itself out of Miss Arendt’s court, which more or less eliminates every revolution that the student of the subject might desire to investigate” (254). But Hobsbawm failed to grasp Arendt’s main point, that the history of the origins of a revolution is different from the history of the revolution itself. Regardless of what social or political conditions that create discontent and generate an uprising, the course of a revolution is a process unto itself, largely shaped by the philosophical decisions revolutionaries make about how to rank different values, and especially political liberty versus social equality. As for the American Revolution, which is obviously a core part of Arendt’s book, Hobsbawm, whose published work was limited to European history, states, “I am not able to judge her contribution…though I  suspect it is not great” (253). Hobsbawm’s confession of scholarly incompetence as concerns the American Revolution is part of a contrived rhetorical strategy for undermining Arendt’s stature as a generalist. This strategy is composed of the following elements:

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• Claiming to express not one’s own political bias as a Marxist and communist (Hobsbawm joined the Communist Party in 1936 and remained a member even after 1956, when the Soviet invasion of Hungary led many British academics to leave the Party) but rather the objective standards of all academic specialists. • Treating history and sociology as if they are interchangeable and comprise a single unified scholarly standard that Arendt does not meet (“The first difficulty encountered by the historian or sociological student of revolutions in Miss Arendt is …” (253)). • Reinforcing one’s scientific credentials by confessing a lack of expertise in one of the areas Arendt covers in her book, thus strengthening through humility the arrogant claim to have unquestionable authority in one’s area of academic competence. The same strategy is evident in another very negative review of the book, published in The Political Science Quarterly. The reviewer, Herbert A. Deane, was a professor of political science at Columbia University. His specialty was European political theory in the early modern period (1500–​1800). As with Hobsbawm, one sees that Deane was put off by Arendt’s critique of “the social.” Deane suggests that Arendt was insensitive to the problem of poverty and that she underestimated the power of modern technology to reduce poverty. Deane also identifies Arendt as a conservative because she regarded the American Revolution as more successful than the French and its successors. Like Hobsbawm, Deane says little about Arendt’s philosophical concerns:  her discussion of the transformation of historical consciousness in the eighteenth century; the changing meaning of the term revolution; and the paradoxes of beginning. He admits that the book contains “penetrating insights and provocative ideas” (Deane 1963, 622), but he never says what these are. He notes “a disturbing tendency to treat facts and texts cavalierly and to set forth sweeping generalizations on the basis of limited evidence” (622). Much of his review is a series of paragraphs that lists what he considers factual errors in Arendt’s discussion of early modern political theory. For example, he states that Arendt is wrong to assert that John Locke’s First Treatise on Government has a theological component (623). He finds fault with Arendt’s treatment of Machiavelli and Rousseau as well. But he never explains why these alleged errors matter; that is, he does not relate the supposed errors to the larger claims in Arendt’s book. His point is that since Arendt makes scholarly mistakes, her intellectual views cannot be taken seriously. These errors “raise doubts in my mind about the soundness of her facts and interpretations on many other matters in which I possess no special competence” (623).

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The reviews by Hobsbawm and Deane suggest that academics in the 1960s believed their first obligation was to assess the scholarly soundness of a book and not to engage with the book’s broad thinking. Especially if the reviewer did not share the author’s political or philosophical views, picking apart errors, or alleged errors, became the reviewer’s exercise. As a result, Arendt’s unique exploration of what she called “the revolutionary pathos of a new beginning” (1963g, 30) did not receive recognition. In the early 1960s, Arendt failed to transform the field of revolutionary studies. But the field eventually moved in the direction she promoted. In 1967 Bernard Bailyn published his groundbreaking Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Through a systematic reading of revolutionary pamphlets in the 1760s and 1770s, Bailyn challenged the interpretation of Charles A. Beard and other Marxist scholars who held that the Revolution was a consequence of class conflict. Bailyn detached political concepts and rhetoric from socially grounded interest and made political discourse central to the study of the American Revolution’s causes. Even more far-​reaching was François Furet’s Interpreting the French Revolution (1981). Furet’s work was a backlash against the social history practiced by Marxists and members of the Annales School in France. Furet himself had been a social historian but evolved into a historian of political culture; he also had a flair for political and linguistic theory. While he did not cite Arendt, he may well have been influenced by her. Scholars such as Lynn Hunt have at least noted the resemblance between the thinking of Furet and Arendt (Hunt 2003). Furet stressed that too much scholarship was about the social origins of the Revolution and that the nature of the event itself had been neglected. A phenomenon like the French Revolution cannot be reduced to a simple cause-​ and-​effect schema. The mere fact that the Revolution had causes does not mean that they are all there is to its history. Let us assume for a moment that these causes are better understood than they actually are, or that someday it will be possible to list them in a more functional order; the fact remains that the revolutionary event, from the very outset, totally transformed the existing situation and created a new mode of historical action that was not intrinsically a part of that situation. (22)

Thus, according to Furet, we need to stop “juxtaposing the analysis of causes with the description of events as if the two techniques were part of one homogeneous discourse, and as if one could be deduced from the other” (23).

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We must take into account the radically new dimension added by revolutionary momentum. There is something in the concept of revolution … that corresponds to its “experienced” historical reality, and is not subservient to the logical sequence of cause and effect: the appearance on the stage of history of a practical and ideological mode of social action totally unrelated to anything that came before. A  specific type of political crisis made it possible, but not inevitable. … The French Revolution is thus the matrix of a new type of historical action and consciousness, related to, but not defined by, a specific situation. (23)

Furet characterizes the revolution mentality as “the ideology of a radical break with the past, a tremendous cultural drive for equality.” He also characterizes it as a worldview in which “all personal problems and all moral or intellectual matters have become political; that there is no human misfortune not amenable to a political solution” (25). Finally, Furet transformed the study of the French Revolution by insisting that the Jacobin Terror of 1793–​1794 was not an extreme phase of the Revolution, or an example of the Revolution blown off its democratic course. He argued that the principles of 1789 comprised an illiberal form of democratic ideology. Like Arendt, he was struck by the weakness of constitutional theory in the Revolution. The revolutionaries were more interested in making history than in a durable constitution. Their aim was to complete the transformation of French society, immediately. They would replace all inequalities with policies stemming from the “general will.” When the revolutionaries began to splinter over competing interpretations of equality, the general will and other basic democratic concepts, they were ideologically unequipped to accept a diversity of political opinion. Consequently, each group denounced its opponents as secret aristocrats, conspirators against Revolution. The Revolution thus devolved into a process of denunciation and terror. Under the influence of Furet and other theoretically acute historians of the French Revolution such as Baker (1990), the historical study of revolution has become an interdisciplinary inquiry, heavily informed by political philosophy and cultural theory. Some of these historians have configured sociology as a clunky impediment to a sophisticated intellectual understanding of revolution. A recent expression of the revolt by the historians against sociology is a book coedited by Baker and Edelstein, Scripting Revolution (2015). In their introduction, the coeditors acknowledge that the comparative study of revolutions has been mostly in the hands of sociologists. But they critique “the specter of Marxism that haunts the sociological school.” Sociologists have repeatedly claimed that revolutions are a bursting out of the “contradictions” embedded

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in a regime. All sociological models, whether emphasizing economic, social or political causes, fail to explain where the transformational vision of the revolutionaries comes from. According to Baker and Edelstein, the revolutionary imagination is not produced by a set of tensions or preconditions in the society that came before the revolution. Revolutionary ideas come for the most part from other revolutions. “One of the major shortcomings of the sociological approach to the study of revolutions is that it does not consider the impact that different revolutions had on each other.” Without certain preconditions, no revolution is possible. But preconditions are not conditions: some human assembly is still required. It is here, we argue, that scripts come into play. When a crisis occurs, a sufficient number of individuals may decide that the time is right to invoke a revolutionary script. The factors that brought about the crisis can vary from case to case: it was a financial crisis that brought France to the brink of revolution in 1789, a political one that triggered the July Revolution of 1830, and a military conflict that led to the Paris Commune of 1871. … But once the crisis has occurred, and a critical mass of actors opt for a revolutionary diagnosis and revolutionary action, events tend to unfold in a very similar–​even scripted–​fashion.

Baker and Edelstein conceive of revolutionary action as a kind of theater. The roles were pioneered in 1789 and have been recurrent since then. Hence, if there was a “Terror” after the Bolsheviks seized power, it was not because, according to sociological theory, that’s when the Terror phase occurs, but rather because the Bolsheviks were consciously modeling their actions on the Jacobin script.

While Baker and Edelstein do not acknowledge Arendt, their view is consistent with hers. Arendt wrote: And if it is true, as Marx said, that the French Revolution had been played in Roman clothes, it is equally true that each of the following revolutions, up to and including the October Revolution, was enacted according to the rules and events that led from the fourteenth of July to the ninth of Thermidor and the eighteenth of Brumaire. (44)

Baker and Edelstein’s critique of sociology is not, of course, the last word. But they allow one to reread some of the sociological classics on revolution with a fresh perspective. Paradoxically, I found myself rereading Moore’s

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classic Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship (1966b) with renewed appreciation after consuming the provocative critique of sociology in Scripting Revolution. Moore sounds much like a crude Marxist at the outset. He speaks of the importance of the long-​term transition from “agrarian” to “industrial” society (xi) and the need to understand revolutions as the outcomes of a “prolonged social process” (xii). It sounds like the political and intellectual features of revolution are being completely subsumed by socioeconomic categories. But then, in his chapter on the French Revolution, Moore explores the limits of Marxist explanation. A considerable part of the chapter focuses on the revolutionary events, especially the radicalization of demands coming from the lower classes. At times Moore recognizes the political space in which language, through revolutionary pamphlets, exerts its own influence. There is, to be sure, an effort to preserve basic social categories such as “the peasantry” and “the bourgeoisie.” But Moore acknowledges the role of the absolutist state in differentiating the class structure of France from that of England. There is a great deal of Tocqueville in his Marxism. Ultimately, he wishes to understand how the nobility came to be affiliated with the state and came to be detested in France to a degree that never occurred in England. One cannot dismiss this sociologist’s effort to correlate the anti-​ noble rhetoric of 1789 with the special institutional structure of France prior to 1789. The conclusion I thus wish to draw, as concerns the stature of sociology as a way of studying revolution, is not that sociology has missed the boat. I only wish to observe that Arendt remains on the boat. When Hobsbawm rejected Arendt, he presumed that history and sociology were twin disciplines, deeply committed to comprehending the structural causes of revolution, and united against any effort to isolate revolutionary thinking from its prior social context. Today, there is no clear consensus in the humanities and social sciences that a sociological approach to the study of revolution is necessary. The works of Furet and of Baker and Edelstein suggest that Arendt’s effort to constitute the study of revolutionary thought and action as a field unto itself remains compelling.

Arendt and the Civil Rights Movement In 1963, Arendt critiqued the totalitarian impulse of modernity in her book on Eichmann. She attempted to revive the high quality of democratic thinking of the American Founders in her book on revolution. She thus framed both the danger and the salvation of modernity in these complementary works. Arendt’s lectures from 1963 help us to understand why On Revolution

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is particularly important. She viewed the nascent civil rights movement as a revolution, and she wished to influence its development. Speaking to students at the University of Chicago at the end of her course on the American Revolution, Arendt said: This is the freedom exp[erienced] in Revolutions—​to be free to begin something new. And this side of human existence is being discovered and we hope preserved in revolutionary times. ([1963e] 2013)

The possibility of a resurgence of revolutionary consciousness excited Arendt. In another 1963 lecture, given at a UNESCO conference, she referred to “the present revolution” of the civil rights movement ([1963i] 2013). Arendt stated that the movement had two faces: “It is political and social.” She suggested that adhering to a political mission would complete the American Revolution and the Civil War. She thought the civil rights movement should seek the complete repeal of segregation as a legal edifice. As for the social face of the movement, she envisioned this to be the fight against poverty and ignorance, and she proposed deferring this project until after a polity of equal citizens was forged. This is a complete inversion of Marxism, and Arendt may well be the most thoughtful of all critics of Marx. She may also be the greatest critic of sociology. But is it just the same criticism? Does her rejection of sociology presume that all sociologists are Marxists (which is plainly false)? Or is her point that sociologists of various schools all share the fatal belief that the feeling of freedom is an illusion, and that something outside of our thinking, “the social,” is the ultimate reality? The student of sociology will have to decide. But Arendt was right about one thing:  we must think about it ourselves; society cannot think for us.

Note 1 For an overview of the reception of Eichmann in Jerusalem, see Maier-​Katkin (2011) and Benhabib (2014). My perusal of 1963 reviews of Eichmann in Jerusalem in academic and literary journals suggests they were more positive on the whole than recent accounts of the book’s critical reception indicate. See, for example, Zeisel (1963) and Berman (1963).

References Arendt, Hannah. (1930a) 1994. “Philosophy and Sociology.” In Essays in Understanding, 1930–​1954, 28–​43. New York: Schocken Books.

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—​—​—​. (1963b)1994. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Classics. —​—​—​. (1963e)2013. “Founding Fathers.” 1963 lecture at University of Chicago. Zeitschrift für politisches Denken/​Journal for Political Thinking. Vol. 7. Online: http://​www.hannaharendt.net/​index.php/​han/​article/​view/​294/​421 (accessed 7 November 2014). —​—​—​. 1963g. On Revolution. New York: Viking Press. —​—​—​. (1963i) 2013. “Revolution and the Idea of Force.” 1963 lecture at a UNESCO conference. Zeitschrift für politisches Denken/​Journal for Political Thinking. Vol. 7. Online: http://​www. hannaharendt.net/​index.php/​han/​article/​view/​293/​420 (accessed 7 November 2014). —​—​—​. (1964d) 2000. “ ‘What Remains? The Language Remains’: A Conversation with Günter Gaus.” In The Portable Hannah Arendt, edited by Peter Baehr, 3–​22. New York: Penguin Books. Augustine. 1887. The Enchiridion, Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love. Translated by J. F. Shaw from Nicene and Post-​Nicene Fathers. Buffalo, NY:  Christian Literature Publishing. Chapter 11, “What Is Called Evil in the Universe Is but the Absence of Good.” Online: http://​www.newadvent.org/​fathers/​1302.htm (accessed 7 November 2014). Baehr, Peter. 2002. “Identifying the Unprecedented: Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Critique of Sociology.” American Sociological Review 67: 804–​831. Bailyn, Bernard. 1967. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Baker, Keith Michael. 1990. Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baker, Keith Michael and Edelstein, Dan. 2015. Scripting Revolution. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Benhabib, Seyla. 2014. “Who’s on Trial, Eichmann or Arendt?” 21 September. Review online:http://​opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/​2014/​09/​21/​whos-​on-​trial-​eichmann-​ or-​anrendt/​?_​r=1 (accessed 7 November 2014). Berman, Ronald. 1963. “Hostis Humani Generis. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt.” Kenyon Review 25: 541–​546. Curtis, Michael Kent. 2000 “A Story for All Seasons:  Akhil Reed Amar on the Bill of Rights.” William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal. Online: http://​scholarship.law.wm.edu/​ wmborj/​vol8/​iss2/​6 (accessed 7 November 2014). Deane, Herbert A. 1963. “On Revolution.” Political Science Quarterly 78: 620–​623. Furet, François. 1981. Interpreting the French Revolution. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1965. “On Revolution.” History and Theory 4: 252–​258. Hunt, Lynn. 2003. “The World We Have Gained: The Future of the French Revolution.” Presidential Address at the American Historical Association. Online:  http://​www. historians.org/​about-​aha-​and-​membership/​aha-​history-​and-​archives/​presidential-​ addresses/​lynn-​hunt (accessed 7 November 2014). Kauffman, Walter. 1975. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New  York:  The Penguin Group, 158–​232. Leatherman, LeRoy. 1964. “Homage to the Secret Bearer.” Sewanee Review. 72: 329–​334. Maier-​Katkin, Daniel. 2011. “The Reception of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem in the United States, 1963–​2011.” Zeitschrift fur politisches Denken/​Journal for Political Thinking. Online:  http://​www.hannaharendt.net/​index.php/​han/​article/​view/​64/​84 (accessed 7 November 2014).

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Moore, Barrington. 1966b. The Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Von Gentz, Friedrich. (1800) 2010. The Origins and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Zeisel, Hans. 1964. “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 353:197–​198.

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Chapter 5 THE LIFE OF THE MIND OF HANNAH ARENDT Liah Greenfeld

Hannah Arendt did not like sociology and made no exception for Weber’s concept of “ideal type.” She thought it prevented sociologists from focusing on what was especially important about phenomena under scrutiny, substituting for their unique qualities features arrived at through simplifying generalizations.1 But this was a misunderstanding. The ideal type has little in common with average type, which Arendt presumed it to be. It is a method for identifying productive questions by, first, constructing a concept of the phenomenon one wishes to understand on the basis of its best-​known and most obvious characteristics, as it would have been, if these characteristics and these characteristics alone were allowed to develop out of their fundamental principles, unthwarted by historical contingencies, and using this “ideal type” as a measuring rod for the importance of actual historical characteristics. The larger the deviation from the ideal type, the more important it is to focus on it (Weber 1978). Were we to construct the ideal type of the work of Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind would stick out like a sore thumb. The author of The Human Condition, of Eichmann in Jerusalem, of Rahel Varnhagen and certainly of The Origins of Totalitarianism, is unrecognizable in it. The Life of the Mind is in no way representative of Arendt’s canon, however varied it may be considered, it seems to contradict the representative works in almost every line; it is completely out of character. Precisely for this reason, it is significant for the understanding of this canon and this character. More than any other, it invites one to transform Arendt’s work into an object of sociological study. The book was composed between 1970 and December 1975, when Arendt died (having finished two of the three planned volumes). Was it her intellectual testament? The fact that the book originated as a prestigious lecture course –​the Gifford Lectures –​which Arendt was unquestionably invited to give because of her contributions to political theory, and the interpretation of

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totalitarianism in the first place, but chose to devote to a subject that nobody expected of her, lends credence to this idea. This makes using The Life of the Mind as the complement to the ideal type of Arendt’s work of interest to intellectual historians and anyone seeking a key to the interpretation of her entire body of work.

What’s in the Book I am using for this chapter the compacted Harcourt edition of 1978 that includes within it the two volumes of The Life of the Mind: volume 1 on thinking; volume 2 on willing. The cover advertises the book as “Arendt’s greatest work”; “The most intriguing … and thought-​provoking book that Hannah Arendt wrote”; “Considered by many to be Hannah Arendt’s greatest work.” This might have been so when the book appeared; it is no longer so, without a doubt. The eulogies go on: “The groundbreaking investigation on how we think”; “offers new insights to illuminate our own mental experience”; “a rich, challenging analysis of human mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.” This is plainly wrong: The Life of the Mind has nothing to do with how we think; it is not about human –​our –​mental activity at all. It is essentially a history of certain ideas in philosophy. Arendt introduces her book as a philosophical discourse: To talk about Thinking seems to me so presumptuous that I feel I should start … with a justification. … What disturbs me is that I try my hand in it, for I have neither claim nor ambition to be a “philosopher” or be numbered among what Kant, not without irony, called … professional thinkers. The question then is, should I not have left these problems in the hands of the experts, and the answer will have to show what prompted me to venture from the relatively safe fields of political science and theory into these rather awesome matters. (1.3)

“The immediate impulse” for her “preoccupation with mental activities,” she explains, came from my attending the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. In my report of it I spoke of “the banality of evil.” Behind that phrase, I held no thesis or doctrine, although I was dimly aware of the fact that it went counter to our tradition of thought –​literary, theological, or philosophic –​about the phenomenon of evil. Evil, we have learned, is something demonic; its incarnation is Satan, a “lightning fall from heaven” or Lucifer, the fallen angel … whose sin is pride, namely that superbia of which only the best are capable: they do not want to serve God but to be like Him. … However, what I was confronted with was utterly different

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and still undeniably factual. I was struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer that made it impossible to trace the incontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer –​at least the very effective one now on trial –​was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous. There was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives, and the only notable characteristic one could detect in his past behavior as well as in his behavior during the trial and throughout the pre-​trial police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness. … It was this absence of thinking … that awakened my interest. Is evil-​doing (the sins of omission, as well as the sins of commission) possible in default of not just “base motives” … but of any motives whatever, of any particular prompting of interest or volition? Is wickedness, however we may define it … not a necessary condition for evil-​doing? Might the problem of good and evil, our faculty for telling right from wrong, be connected with our faculty of thought? (1.3)

Implicitly, this introductory passage makes what turns out to be the central argument in The Life of the Mind: that is, that thinking is antithetical to evil, or, at least, evildoing. The premises are as follows: a. Evil men belong among the best, the superior, the extraordinary men; they are demonic, which is divine with the opposite sign. b. Greatness, in turn, is equal to sophisticated thinking, which produces firm (clear) ideological convictions and specific motives. It is presupposed that the only alternatives that exist on both points (i.e., in regard to the relationship between greatness and evil, and greatness and thinking) are the direct contradictions of these axioms: thus, if evil men are banal, ordinary, it follows that extraordinary thinking men are not evil. Eichmann revealed himself as thoughtless and, therefore, banal. This was contrary to the original expectation, but “undeniably factual,” therefore, the matter is decided. Logical parsing makes possible an alternative reading. It separates evil from evil deeds. If wickedness (evil) is not a necessary condition for evildoing, then evil men who are superior like Lucifer may be free from responsibility for evil done by ordinary men, thoughtless automatons that they are. Automatons are not moved by evil ideas developed by great evil men; they simply obey orders. The definition of the problem of good and evil as “our ability to tell right from wrong” complicates the matter further. Eichmann the ordinary, owing to his thoughtlessness, was not able to appreciate that inflicting suffering on and murdering millions of innocent men, women and children was wrong. It accords with the “banality of evil” that he was evil and banal at the same time. A superior man, a great thinker, such as, say, Heidegger or Schmitt, obviously would be able to tell right from wrong; ergo, such a man could not be evil. Whichever way one turns within this passage, one ends logically deprived of

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the ability to pronounce moral judgment on German intellectuals complicit in the National Socialist regime, and on philosophers above all. The book does not develop this argument. It runs through the Thinking volume, waxing and waning, but is less clearly “the immediate impulse” behind Arendt’s preoccupation with the second mental activity of Willing. Essentially, The Life of the Mind consists of expanded lecture notes and represents a prolonged rumination on related themes. Its structure is loose and it is not the argument regarding the antithesis of thinking and evil that provides it. Yet the book cannot be understood without it. It turns out to be a kind of special –​and very personal –​pleading. Arendt brings to The Life of the Mind the great storage of philosophical knowledge she acquired as a brilliant student. Reading it, one learns about Arendt’s mind and about the tradition carried in it. The lesson is not taught because there is no intentional structuring of self-​presentation or tradition, only natural signification –​Arendt representing the life of her mind as a smell represents a particular living organism, and representing the German philosophical tradition as the same smell represents the form of life in general. The unintentional, untaught character of its lessons makes The Life of the Mind, in the words of Marc Bloch, that precious sort of document that testifies in spite of itself (Bloch 1953). The philosophical tradition represented in The Life of the Mind is not universal. Its particularism immediately and necessarily limits its relevance for the understanding of its stated subject. This tradition, which Arendt consistently calls “our tradition” and obviously believes to be universal, the reservoir of the collected wisdom of the ages of, at the very least, Western (i.e., not Oriental) history, begins with Greek pre-​Socratics and culminates with Heidegger. But what (or, rather, who) is not included in it is no less significant than what (or who) is. The index of the Thinking volume accords one entry each to John Locke and David Hume. In the Willing volume, the two philosophers generally considered among the most important in the Western philosophical tradition, specifically in the philosophy regarding faculties of the mind, do not receive even this sparse recognition. It is as if neither Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” nor Hume’s “Enquiry” into the subject have ever been written. Just for purposes of comparison, Kant gets 62 entries in the index of the Thinking volume, and 35 in that of Willing; Heidegger is accorded 24 in the former and 38 in the latter; and even Marx, an author not known to devote much attention to mental faculties, is recognized with six in each. French pre-​ Kantian philosophers fare little better than the British. Descartes is referred to on nine pages in Thinking and 12 in Willing, but is dismissed as wrong throughout. “Descartes’ Cogito me cogitare ergo sum is a non

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sequitur,” declares Arendt on page 20 of the first volume to repeat again and again: “The cogito ergo sum is a fallacy.” “It never occurred” to Descartes, she explains, “that no cogitation and no cogito me cogitare, no consciousness of an acting self that had suspended all faith in the reality of its intentional objects, would ever have been able to convince him of his own reality had he actually been born in a desert, without a body and its senses to perceive ‘material’ things and without fellow-​creatures to assure him that what he perceived was perceived by them too.” (She appeals here to the commonsense interpretation of experience, the epistemic value of which the book consistently denigrates. It espouses a fundamentally idealistic position regarding the life of the mind; yet, the materialist privileging of the senses over consciousness is also consistent.) However, she is ebullient in her praise of French thinkers critical of Descartes, as in: “What Merleau-​Ponty had to say against Descartes is brilliantly right” (1.48–​49). “Our tradition of thought” thus proves very limited, at least when it comes to its geographical provenance –​in modern times it seems to be largely confined to Germany. At least as remarkably, when it comes to its historical extension, this tradition of ours allots almost no place to the Bible. (This body of literature, arguably foundational for our civilization, is treated as cavalierly as thinkers of the seventeenth century, the first period of modern philosophy, which emerges in France, incidentally as Biblical criticism, and its central figure, Descartes –​mentioned, if mentioned at all, in order to be dismissed.) Instead, “our tradition” unambiguously starts with the Greeks. A  rather curious pattern emerges. It seems that only thinkers called philosophers are included. The name, or, more precisely, the title, is the decisive characteristic. The word “philosophy” is Greek, Greeks applied it to themselves, ergo: they were philosophers by definition. The Hebrews who composed the Bible, in distinction and also by definition, are not philosophers, for they had their own words for “wisdom” and its “lovers.” This gets more restrictive in the modern period, in which, by the late eighteenth century, the name, previously used as a simple epithet, becomes associated with a professional, academic position and actually transformed into an official title. This happens, specifically, in Germany. French or British philosophers may or may not be professors of philosophy. Descartes was not. Locke was a physician. Hume was on several occasions denied such professorships. It is questionable that in a contemporary American university they would be placed in departments of philosophy. But no such problem exists in the cases of Kant, Hegel or Heidegger. “Our tradition of thought” in The Life of the Mind proves an academic tradition. The reason Arendt does not devote a single word to either Locke’s “Essay” or Hume’s “Enquiry” Concerning Human Understanding, thus, is that her book on mental activities does not concern either human or understanding. It

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concerns –​Kant’s irony forgotten as soon as it is mentioned –​a peculiar mental process characteristic of a peculiar breed of men, Denker von Gewerbe, professional thinkers. Volume One of The Life of the Mind: Thinking begins with Heidegger. The epigraph, taken from his writings, asserts: “Thinking does not bring knowledge as do the sciences. Thinking does not produce usable practical wisdom. Thinking does not solve the riddles of the universe. Thinking does not endow us directly with the power to act.” Now we know what thinking does not do.2 It remains to us to learn what it does –​and what it is, in the first place. Arendt’s own discussion starts with the opposite of thinking –​thoughtlessness (which, we recall, is the condition of evil). Thoughtlessness, she says, expresses itself in “clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct [which] have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence” (1.4). This statement, among other implications, places Arendt in direct opposition to the project of sociology, best reflected in Durkheim’s concept of “social fact.” For her, it appears, the social –​which consists in a very large part of conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct  –​does not even belong to reality, while the events and facts that by virtue of their existence make the claim on our thinking attention are, by definition, not social. This does not necessarily mean that, if pressed, Arendt would insist (as logic of the statement would lead her to) that social norms, values and roles do not actually exist; what it does mean, however, is that she places thinking outside, and in opposition, to the social. As we proceed further, we see that she defines “the activity of thinking as such” as “the habit of examining whatever happens to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content,” that is, some sort of disinterested analysis. But it is not only that, as immediately she adds: “The very word ‘con-​science’ … means ‘to know with and by myself,’ a kind of knowledge that is actualized in every thinking process.” From this we may infer that thinking is not just analysis of events and facts that claim our attention outside of our minds, but a form of self-​knowledge, or, rather, the mind turned upon itself. It is here that Arendt asks whether the activity of thinking as such could be among the conditions that make men abstain from evildoing, to which she responds with a rhetorical question evidently soliciting agreement but as likely to provoke astonishment:  “And is not this hypothesis enforced by everything we know about conscience, namely, that a ‘good conscience’ is enjoyed as a rule only by really bad people, criminals and such, while only ‘good people’ are capable of having bad conscience?” (1.5).

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Within her tradition, Arendt’s approach is conventional. She begins by distinguishing between the two “worlds” that present themselves to us: the “true world” of the suprasensory and the “apparent world” of the sensory. The mind is “the organ for the suprasensory,” she says. Our senses reveal to us only appearances. (A sociologist would remember encountering this view –​quite contemptuous precisely of that kind of data contemporary sociology respects above others –​in Marx.3) With the scientific disrespect for the suprasensory, she goes on, “its opposite, the world of appearances as understood for so many centuries, is also annihilated”: This insight of Nietzsche’s, namely, that “the elimination of the suprasensory also eliminates the merely sensory and thereby the difference between them” (Heidegger), is actually so obvious that it defies every attempt to date it historically; all thinking in terms of two worlds implies that these two are inseparably connected with each other. Thus, all the elaborate modern arguments against positivism are anticipated by the unsurpassed simplicity of Democritus’ little dialogue between the mind, the organ for the suprasensory, and the senses. Sense perceptions are illusions, says the mind; they change according to the conditions of our body; sweet, bitter, color, and so on exist only nomo, by convention among men, and not physei, according to true nature behind the appearances. Whereupon the senses answer: “Wretched mind! Do you overthrow us while you take from us your evidence [pisteis, everything you can trust]? Our overthrow will be your downfall.” In other words, once the always precarious balance between the two worlds is lost, no matter whether the “true world” abolishes the “apparent one” or vice versa, the whole framework of reference in which our thinking was accustomed to orient itself breaks down. In these terms, nothing seems to make much sense anymore. (1.11)

Of course, Nietzsche’s insight (quoted, remarkably, through Heidegger, which is characteristic of the book –​a backhanded compliment to Heidegger, consistently deprived of any originality in his ostensibly most important contributions) is not as obvious as that. It would be obvious, if the thinking in terms of two worlds was the only possible way of thinking about reality. But it is not. The fact that it represents the “framework of reference in which our [read German academic philosophical] thinking was accustomed to orient itself ” does not at all contradict the possibility that this framework is misleading and that thinking in very different terms may better advance our understanding. (One such preferable possibility will be discussed later.) The very breakdown of the framework, which Arendt presents as proof positive of the crucial importance of the balance between the “true” and “apparent” worlds, from a

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certain –​Kuhnian –​perspective in philosophy of science, would represent the demand for its replacement with another paradigm, that is, an urgent need for an intellectual revolution. But Kuhn, clearly, does not belong to “our tradition of thinking.” Actually, Arendt does not think he belongs to any tradition of thinking, because he pursues knowledge, and this (as we know from Heidegger already) is not what thinking is about. We are, says Arendt, “what men always have been –​thinking beings. By this I mean no more than that men have an inclination, perhaps a need, to think beyond the limitations of knowledge, to do more with this ability than use it as an instrument for knowing and doing.” This definition of thinking, which some may consider rather narrow, is based on the experience of thinkers, who increasingly reveal themselves as a much more exclusive group than the aforementioned “men.” She continues: The only record we possess of what thinking as an activity meant to those who had chosen it as a way of life is what we would call today “metaphysical fallacies.” None of the systems, none of the doctrines transmitted to us by the great thinkers may be convincing or even plausible to modern readers; but none of them, I shall try to argue here, is arbitrary and none can be simply dismissed as sheer nonsense. On the contrary, the metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues we have to what thinking means to those who engage in it. (1.12)

In his “Autobiographical Notes,” describing his intellectual trajectory, in the context of explaining how he arrived at the theory of special relativity, Einstein explicitly raised the question “What, in effect, is thinking?” and devoted to it a separate chapter (Einstein 1979). When Arendt early in the text introduces this same question, “What is thinking?” as the problem she is “preoccupied” with, she does not mention Einstein. (Einstein merits only one passing remark from her much later in her book.) Einstein had no need to resort to “metaphysical fallacies.” His approach was empirical: he examined his own experience through careful introspection. But, unaware of this possibility, Arendt continues confidently: At least one point has been taken for granted: that these disciplines –​whether you called them metaphysics or philosophy –​dealt with matters that were not given to sense-​perception and that their understanding transcended common-​ sense reasoning, which springs from sense experience and can be validated by empirical tests and means … all thinkers were agreed that, in order to deal with such matters, man has to detach his mind from the senses by detaching it both from the world as given by them and from the sensations –​or passions –​aroused by sense-​objects. The philosopher, to the extent that he is a philosopher and not

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(what of course he also is) “a man like you and me,” withdraws from the world of appearances, and the region he then moves in has always, since philosophy’s beginning, been described as the world of the few. (1.13)

“Thinker,” in this discussion, means “philosopher.” But even those exclusively concerned with the life of philosophers’ minds must find this characterization of their peculiar thinking questionable. To begin with, commonsense reasoning is not coextensive with the empirical, but only with the conventional. And, if we take what “all [Arendt’s] thinkers” agreed on to be true, we would have to assume that “philosophy” was born in the Christian Middle Ages and dead before the sixteenth century, because both the venerable Greeks and the few Englishmen and Frenchmen whom Arendt, however grudgingly, admits to the club, were very interested in the evidence of the senses. (Newton, for instance, belonged to an explicitly “philosophical” tradition, that of “experimental philosophy,” focused unabashedly on the world of “appearances.”) The fact that many today question the distinction between common men and “professional thinkers” engaging in the “highest” human activity, Arendt writes, justifies considering the problem of evil in the light of “thinking”: If, as I suggested before, the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to “demand” its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant –​in this respect almost alone among the philosophers –​was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications, and he once observed that “stupidity is caused by a wicked heart.” This is not true: absence of thought is not stupidity; it can be found in highly intelligent people, and a wicked heart is not its cause; it is probably the other way round, that wickedness may be caused by absence of thought. (1.13)

If absence of thought is not stupidity, logically Arendt should not be able to say that Kant’s proposition about stupidity is not true. That aside, is not Kant quoted to support Arendt’s claim? Turns out, the disagreement between them is profound. Kant drew a distinction, Arendt continues, between reason and understanding (or “intellect”): He was also quite aware that “the urgent need” of reason is both different from and “more than mere quest and desire for knowledge.” Hence the distinguishing of the two faculties, reason and intellect, coincides with a distinction

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between two altogether different mental activities, thinking and knowing, and two altogether different concerns, meaning, in the first category, and cognition, in the second. (1.14)

Yet, the great philosopher remained less than fully aware of the extent to which he had liberated reason, the ability to think, by justifying it in terms of the ultimate questions … The great obstacle that reason (Vernunft) puts in its own way arises from the side of the intellect (Verstand) and the entirely justified criteria it has established for its own purposes, that is, for quenching our thirst, and meeting our need, for knowledge and cognition. The reason neither Kant nor his successors ever paid much attention to thinking as an activity and even less to the experiences of thinking ego is that, all distinctions notwithstanding, they were demanding the kind of results and applying the kind of criteria for certainty and evidence that are the results and criteria of cognition. But … the assumption must be that thinking and reason are not concerned with what the intellect is concerned with. To … put it in a nutshell: The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. (1.14–​15)

In other words, German philosophers, on whose interpretation of thinking Arendt relies, misinterpreted themselves and, diverted from the path of pure reason, that is, the unadulterated ability to think, ended up among scientists and the rest of us, representatives of intellect, questing for truth and focused not on the “true world,” but on the world of “appearances.” Even the neo-​ Kantian Heidegger was known, in an unguarded moment, to make the mistake of equating meaning and truth, and Heidegger, as we already know, knew better. (1.15) The introduction into the discussion of the concept of meaning may hearten a sociologist. On the face of it there seems to be an exact parallel between Arendt’s idea of philosophy and Weber’s idea of sociology:  both insist that meaning and not truth should be the focus of the enterprise. There are good reasons for the affinity between German philosophical tradition and Weber’s view of sociology, since it is clearly in conversation with the former that the latter crystallized. Weber’s very choice of words for the subject matter of the new discipline he advocated –​“social action,” which he carefully and immediately defined as action, committed or omitted, meaningful for the actor4  –​is only understandable in the context of philosophical discussions that identified action with “the real” and meaning with “the ideal.” Weber wished to stress the reality of meaning, to make it a legitimate subject for science, dealing with the empirical, and by appropriating the term that was in

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his immediate intellectual environment associated with objective reality (and applying it to a subjective phenomenon) he achieved it. (This is just one example of how important the historical context is for the evolution of scientific concepts, and language is for thinking. Durkheim, incidentally, also in a position of an innovator, faced a very similar situation:  he too had, in the first place, to appease the predictable naysayers. But in France at the time, positive science, and not idealistic philosophy, ruled the intellectual roost. This explains Durkheim’s choice of the phrase “social fact” to refer to mental phenomena and his insistence that “social facts” be approached as things [Durkheim 1982]. The choice of different words, carrying different conceptual baggage, derived from different traditions, and chosen because of the exigencies of different situations, to refer to precisely the same class of phenomena, has obscured the close affinity between the two greatest sociological theorists for a century, even to themselves.) However, if we are to judge by Arendt’s reaction, this “cunning of (Weber’s) reason” did not impress philosophers, no rapprochement occurred and, while uttering the same words, they continued to mean very different, if not opposite, things. Arendt’s idea of “meaning,” ironically, means precisely what Weber calls “truth”: it is empirically inaccessible, unknowable, unfathomable; it cannot be learned from experience, because it is beyond the world of so-​called appearances and belongs to the “true world” of the really real. Even more confusing is that, despite the constant use of the phrase “true world,” she thinks that “truth” is the correspondence to perceived facts and that this is what science wants. Here is a representative passage (1.57–​65): Cognition, whose highest criterion is truth, derives that criterion from the world of appearances in which we take our bearings through sense perceptions, whose testimony is self-​evident, that is, unshakeable by argument and replaceable only by other evidence. As the German translation of the Latin perceptio … clearly indicates, truth is located in the evidence of the senses. But that is by no means the case with meaning and with the faculty of thought, which searches for it, the latter does not ask what something is or whether it exists at all –​its existence is always taken for granted –​but what it means for it to be. This distinction between truth and meaning seems to me to be not only decisive for any inquiry into the nature of human thinking but also to be the necessary consequence of Kant’s crucial distinction between reason and intellect. Admittedly, Kant himself never pursued that particular implication of his own thought; in fact, a clear-​cut line of demarcation between these two altogether different modes cannot be found in the history of philosophy. … The questions raised by our thirst for knowledge arise from our curiosity about the world, our desire to investigate whatever is given to our sensory apparatus. … But the questions raised by thinking and

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which it is in reason’s very nature to raise –​questions of meaning –​are all unanswerable by common sense and the refinement of it we call science. The quest for meaning is “meaningless” to common sense and common-​sense reasoning, because it is the sixth sense’s function to fit us into the world of appearances and make us at home in the world given by our five senses; there we are and no questions asked.

“What science and the quest for knowledge are after is irrefutable truth,” she offers, and there are two kinds of this: truths of reasoning and truths of fact. “Truths of fact,” in Arendt’s view, “are as compelling for anybody witnessing them with his own eyes as the proposition that two and two make four is for anybody in his right mind,” while “rational or mathematical truth presents itself as self-​evident to everyone endowed with the same brain power.” With the authority of a neuroscientist, she declares: “The source of mathematical truth is the human brain,” commenting: Brain power is no less natural, no less equipped to guide us through an appearing world, than our senses plus common sense and the extension of it that Kant called intellect. The best proof of this may lie in the otherwise quite mysterious fact that mathematical reasoning, the purest activity of our brain, and at first glance, because of its abstraction from all qualities given to our senses, the farthest removed from sheer common-​sense reasoning, could play such an enormously liberating role in science’s exploration of the universe. (1.60)

The agreement with the evidence of the senses and dictates of the brain, Arendt argues, is necessary in the sense that no one can withhold it: “Truth is what we are compelled to admit by the nature either of our senses or the brain,” while “The opposite of necessity is … freedom.” She does not wish to deny, she concedes, that thinking’s quest for meaning and knowledge’s quest for truth are connected. In fact, it is “by posing the unanswerable questions of meaning, [that] men establish themselves as question-​asking beings.” (The rhetoric here –​the postulation of empirically unverifiable and logically arbitrary causal relations as facts and building on them  –​once more reminds us of Marx’s “German Ideology.”) “It is more than likely that men,” Arendt continues, “if they were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions, would loselane not only the ability to produce those thought-​things we call works of art but also the capacity to ask all the answerable questions.” Yet the differences between cognition and thinking trump their affinity; among other things, cognition “leaves behind a growing treasure of knowledge.” Thinking, in distinction, does not “and the need to think can therefore never be stilled by the insights of ‘wise men’ ” (1.62).

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Kant, on whose pronouncements Arendt relies most often to substantiate her own claims, continues to disappoint her and she is clearly troubled by this. She writes: “What undermined Kant’s greatest discovery, the distinction between knowledge, which uses thinking as a means to an end, and thinking itself as it arises out of ‘the very nature of our reason’ and is done for its own sake, was that he constantly compared the two with each other.” Kant, she says, “is afraid that his ideas might … turn out to be ‘empty thought-​things.’ ” For this reason, “he equates what we have here called meaning with Purpose and even Intention. … it turns out, reason pursues specific purposes, has specific intentions in resorting to its ideas; it is the need of human reason and its interest in God, Freedom, and Immortality that make men think.” But, she concludes, “we do not have to go hunting for small contradictions in the work of this very great thinker. Right in the midst of the passages quoted above occurs the sentence that stands in the greatest possible contrast to his own equation of reason with Purpose: ‘Pure reason is in fact occupied with nothing but itself. It can have no other vocation’ ” (1.65). Arendt chooses to consider this Kant’s final position. It is difficult to say what is more frustrating:  Arendt’s awareness of the many contradictions in the thought of philosophers on whose ideas about thinking she bases her own to the arguments she attributes to them, or her lack of awareness of the incongruity of her own view of science. We must believe that the life of the mind she describes is the life of, at least, some –​granted, very few –​people’s minds. But how can we believe this, if even Kant, the one who discovers the difference between thinking and knowing (his predecessors, though also included among thinkers, pondering the meaning of “the true world” beyond mere appearances accessible through perception, must have been unaware of this distinction), does not think that he thinks that way? Are we to rely on Arendt’s erudition and numerous quotations it brings us, which contradict her, or on her assertions that some of these quotations, which do not, represent the actual (can one use the word “true” here?) state of the minds of those quoted? As to science, Arendt’s idea of it is based exclusively on Newtonian physics –​physics before Einstein –​and, more important, science before biology. It is a naive idea, presuming a perfectly logical universe, lying “out there,” ready to be discovered through the natural medium (a product of brain power) of mathematics –​indeed, reflection of the creative intelligence behind everything there is, including the knower of precisely the kind to know everything there is. Only, as we knew already in the 1970s, the physical universe is not perfectly logical, and mathematics, to quote Einstein, “as far as they are certain … do not refer to reality” (Einstein 1922: 28). Neither is the physical universe everything there is. There are also the undeniable empirical phenomena of Life, in general, and

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of human life, in particular, which presumes History and Culture. History does get a passing mention in the book, in connection to Hegel’s philosophy of history. Culture does not. But even in the former case, Arendt gives no thought to the inescapably historical nature of our scientific concepts, of mathematics, of the mind itself and, most important in the present context, of the discipline of philosophy she is expounding and its idea of science. In a textbook manner, philosophy is treated as timeless, wholly independent of the lives of the people who produce it, passively reflecting (rather than preoccupied with) not the truth, of course, in the sense of correspondence between propositions and sense perceptions, but “the true world” and thus, though sometimes confused as anything passing through the medium of mortal men is bound to be, by definition supremely valuable and worth mortal men’s attention. Speaking practically, philosophy is worth our attention because of the discipline it imposes on thinking of the sort mortal “men, like you and me” do, when we attempt to generate objective knowledge. Not coincidentally, Durkheim, the great sociologist, was educated as a philosopher. This discipline expresses itself, first of all, in the careful definition of one’s terms, foremost those referring to the object or focus of one’s discussion. Without such careful definition, as was discovered already by Thales, arguments are not arguable. Only their exposure to contradiction, and its avoidance having been so exposed, makes them arguable, that is, compelling in the absence of any other force but logic. This is logically impossible, if the terms are not defined. It is sad that sociologists often must be reminded of the importance of definitions. Even colossal reservoirs of data (the big data of much fame recently) are rendered trite by the lack of logical discipline. Much sadder, however, is when a philosopher forgets about this essential requirement of the profession: central terms left undefined make contradicting one’s propositions impossible, and discussions consisting of uncontradictable propositions are not simply trite, but meaningless –​they are, logically, nonsense. It is ironic when such a thing happens to a discussion of meaning, yet this is what happens in The Life of the Mind. Arendt would not make up her mind as to what she means by “meaning.” Besides telling us repeatedly that meaning is what the faculty of thought searches for (1.57), that is, defining meaning in terms of thought or thinking that is in turn defined as “the appetite for meaning,” she offers her reader no guidance. Nevertheless, it seems that most of the time the meaning she believes philosophers are after is precisely what Kant in the offending passages calls “Purpose” or “Intention” (in the sense of the intention of creative intelligence behind the universe, or God): the ultimate “Meaning of Life,” in other words. It is metaphysical, the questions behind it being not “what does it mean to live, to be?” or, more specifically, “what does it mean to be human? to live a human life?” –​these are empirical questions,

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answerable through biological or sociological description –​but “why are we here? what is the justification for being and living?” They boil down to a theodicy, the justification for suffering, and thus bring us back to the problem of evil. These questions are not unanswerable; they are complex, debatable, but perfectly answerable within the framework of our fundamental beliefs. Does a believing Jew, Christian, or Muslim find them unanswerable? No. The problem for Arendt, and for anyone in our unbelieving age, is not that such questions are unanswerable, but that we do not want to accept the obvious answer (i.e., the answer obvious to a committed nonbeliever): life has no meaning besides that with which we (in our different times and societies) endow it. For the simple reason that no creative intelligence is behind the universe –​which is the core of the nonbeliever’s belief –​there can be no intention or purpose behind it. None. Given this, there is no justification for suffering. The fact that God’s nonexistence cannot be proven, empirically or logically, interferes with this our faith as little as the impossibility of proving His existence does with that of the believers. The suspension of critical judgment insofar as our fundamental beliefs are concerned is a necessary condition of sanity. The most one can do is to be aware of one’s beliefs and not to confuse them with conclusions arrived at by critical thinking. Both the awareness of this limitation on reason and its acceptance are essential for a scholar who wishes to understand the life of the mind. But neither appears to have crossed the mind of Hannah Arendt. Insofar as the search for meaning is concerned, the dispute between philosophy and sociology ultimately boils down to the question of methodology. Some of us believe that meaning is to be discovered through speculation (Arendt’s “thinking”), some  –​through the examination of empirical reality. But it is always empirical reality –​our experience –​that we want to come to grips with. We are all interested in understanding, making sense of, the human condition as it is –​we all would like to have the assurance that our suffering is not senseless, meaningful for none but each sufferer in his or her loneliness. We would all like to find meaning in this sense. But what we find is that, without creative intelligence behind the universe, phenomena, such as life and humanity, which are not in-​built into the timeless material world, but have a definite beginning in it, resulting from an accident utterly improbable from the point of view of its immanent laws, are temporary and purposeless, and that we –​ meaning-​seeking beings –​give meanings to our lives as we go along. There is no meaning of life to be discovered besides the many ones we endow life with, which means that the only way to access these meanings, to learn about them, and to talk about them without talking nonsense, is the Weberian, sociological way. By constructing these makeshift meanings “men like you and me” make suffering sufferable –​not all kinds of suffering, it is true. Some cases, such as the Holocaust, remain beyond the reach of meaning, for which reason we tend

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to identify it with absolute evil. Remarkably, suffering does not figure at all in The Life of the Mind. Evil, brought into the discussion by way of Eichmann’s trial, is never associated with inflicting it, but is presented as the opposite of the equally undefined good and beautiful, as kakia, “bad,” though the reader is treated to detailed discourses on the Greek idea that death was the greatest evil and the Roman one that it was, rather, fear. This detached approach to evil may explain why Arendt is not interested in empirically accessible meanings. Arendt’s idea of the mind emerges fully in the ninth chapter of the first volume, which Arendt opens writing: Thinking, willing, and judging are the three basic mental activities; they cannot be derived from each other and … reduced to a common denominator. To the question What makes us think? there is ultimately no answer other than what Kant called “reason’s need,” the inner impulse of that faculty to actualize itself in speculation. And something very similar is true for the will, which neither reason nor desire can move. (1.69)

These activities are basic, she continues, because they are “autonomous,” which “implies their being unconditioned; none of the conditions of either life or the world corresponds to them directly.” The “main characteristic” of these mental activities, she adds, “is their invisibility … they never appear” (1.69–​71). The mind, therefore, is not only “the organ for the suprasensory,” as we learned earlier, it belongs to the “suprasensory”; empirically inaccessible, it cannot be known. Arendt postulates that it consists of three essentially unconnected faculties, each self-​caused, because independent both of each other and of anything in life or in the world (“autonomous” here means much more than the term usually denotes). How does she know that? The independence of the three basic faculties renders problematic the idea of the mind. In which sense is it a meaningful unit? It is certainly not an organ composed of systematically related (interdependent) elements. But, if there is nothing to the mind beyond the independent faculties or activities, one cannot talk of “the life of the mind.” Each of the faculties stands on its own and each can be discussed on its own. These discussions may be assembled as in a specialized encyclopedia, as is usual for discussions about things of a kind, but there is no logical necessity for this and they in no way affect each other. This would explain the absence of an overarching argument and a very loose structure of The Life of the Mind, but begs the question: why did Arendt write it? Could she want her likely last book to be a compilation of what some philosophers said about some mental faculties? The Willing volume, which represents precisely such a compilation, creates a strong impression that it was not originally planned, but written as an answer

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to requirements of Gifford Lectureship. Unlike Thinking, it has no epigraph (while the two epigraphs to the book as a whole are discussed in Thinking); its introduction is very short and gives no explanation for Arendt’s interest in the subject; and, as mentioned earlier, it has no argument. Its structure is roughly chronological and, instead of beginning with Heidegger, it ends with him. In other respects, it is similar to Thinking: quoting from the same roster of authorities, exhibiting the same level of erudition, lack of originality and logical problems. The few words in Thinking regarding the will’s independence from reason and desire gives the reader a foretaste of the discussion in Willing. The main concept alongside which it is considered by philosophers, Arendt says in the introduction, is Freedom, commenting: “The touchstone of a free act is always our awareness that we could also have left undone what we actually did. … Willing, it appears, has an infinitely greater freedom than thinking, which even in its freest, most speculative form cannot escape the law of non-​contradiction” (2.5). (Thinking here, again, means Western philosophical thinking.) Several pages later, she, without any argument, substitutes “willed act” for “free act”: “willed acts, which –​on the assumption of free will –​could all be defined as acts about which I know that I could as well have left them undone” (2.14). The will becomes freedom. The claim that the will is free is taken by Arendt to mean that one is free to do whatever one wants and the subsequent discussion revolves around the question whether indeed this is possible, arguments to the contrary offered as negations of free will. The fact that ancient philosophers did not equate free will with freedom allows Arendt to say, all the while relying on modern interpretations, that they did not have the concept of will at all, and that it was “discovered” only in the Christian era, though, apparently, discovered mostly to be denied. Dubious about will as “the location of human freedom” (2.19), Arendt brings up the possibility to consider it as “the organ of the future.” She clearly prefers it, writing: “The Will, if it exists at all … is as obviously our mental organ for the future as memory is our mental organ for the past”(2.13). This has been the position of modern philosophy, “because the modern age’s main and entirely new concept, the notion of Progress as the ruling force in human history, placed an unprecedented emphasis on the future.” At “the last stage of the modern age,” which was also “the last era of authentic metaphysical thought,” “the Will began to be substituted for Reason as man’s highest mental faculty”: “suddenly, right after Kant, it became fashionable to equate Willing and Being” (2.20). The emphasis on future naturally focuses attention on Heidegger’s Being and Time, which is discussed throughout. The penultimate chapter of Willing (2.172–​94), however, is devoted to his reinterpretation in volume II of Nietzsche

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(after World War II) of his intellectual “reversal” of the 1930s, reflected in volume I, and leading to “his passionate insistence on willing ‘not to will.’ ” The place of this historically confusing story, which adds just another curlicue to the convolutions of the concept of will in German philosophical tradition, is significant for the understanding of Arendt’s book. She writes: The first volume explicates Nietzsche by going along with him, while the second is written in a subdued but unmistakable polemical tone … what the reversal originally turns against is primarily the will-​to-​power. In Heidegger’s understanding, the will to rule and to dominate is a kind of original sin, of which he found himself guilty when he tried to come to terms with his brief past in the Nazi movement. When he later announced publicly –​for the first time [in 1949] –​that there had been a “reversal,” for years in fact, in a larger sense, he had been recasting his views on the whole of history from the Greeks to the present and focusing primarily not on the Will but on the relation between Being and Man. Originally during those years, the “reversal” had been a turning against the self-​assertion of man (as proclaimed in the famous speech delivered when he became rector of Freiburg University in 1933) … Now it turned against the alleged subjectivism of Being and Time and the book’s primary concern with man’s existence, his mode of being. (2.173)

Insofar as will is concerned, apparently, these multiple reversals led Heidegger to see death as “the ultimate savior of man’s essence” and to define will as the destroyer of this essence. He equated will with “the ‘craving to persist,’ ‘to hang on,’ the inordinate appetite men have ‘to cling to themselves’ ” (2.193).

Some More on the Life of the Mind Whatever interest Arendt’s fragmentary history of philosophers’ notions of mental activities may hold for others, for a sociologist the main question about The Life of the Mind remains: What moved Arendt to write this uncharacteristic work (unoriginal, logically flawed and so entirely outside the political sphere on which her readers expected her to comment)? Fundamentally a question in the sociology of knowledge, this one, as all sociological questions, is empirical. Its answer must be sought in the life of Arendt’s mind. Arendt to the contrary, the mind is an empirical reality: it is unquestionably experienced and, as such, it can be studied. Though not an organ, it is a complex, dynamic system and in this sense can be said to have a life. It is by focusing on makeshift, changing (Weberian) meanings that we come to understand and appreciate the life of the mind. For this life (like any life,

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a process) consists entirely in handling and construction of meanings. To equate the preoccupation with the empirical with animal cognitive processes, determined by sensory perceptions, is to submit slavishly and unreflectively to the ancient authority of “thinking in terms of two worlds” and to deny the mind (one’s own, in the first place) its magnificent creative ability, and therefore freedom. Even cursory self-​examination makes obvious that most of our knowledge of the world is produced by our minds and not our bodies (brains, whatever is their power), and what we perceive through our bodily senses itself, in the overwhelming majority of instances, is dependent on the cues from our minds, rather than the other way around. It is the mind that focuses our attention on certain stimuli from the environment, forcing our brains to reject most of what the environment actually offers us at any given moment as so much random noise: we tend to perceive only what we believe to be there. Our beliefs reflect the meanings we assign to different components of the world we seek to know. The quest for knowledge and the quest for meaning, which Arendt separates so sharply, cannot be distinguished even as stages of the same process. Meaning is what makes the mind –​it is the intentions behind any specifically human (i.e., not animal) act or utterance, which make the connection between any sign and its referent arbitrary and radically separate humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom. In other words, meaning is the changeable significance conveyed by symbols. Any other meaning of “meaning” is metaphorical and obscures this meaning. Being essentially symbolic, meaning is also essentially historical, because the significance of every symbol changes with the context. The human mental process, the mind, is the process of such symbolic changes, supported by the individual brain. This makes every mind an autonomous and creative process. At the same time, minds coexisting in the shared symbolic space are interdependent, because the overwhelming majority of symbols (and their meanings) processed even by the most creative mind is given to it ready-​made from the outside. This shared symbolic space, which is also a process, also essentially historical, and which goes on by means of individual minds, is culture. The life of the mind is cultural life, historical life, symbolic life, which is supported at every step by the organic life. Within this life one can distinguish particular symbolic operations. One of such operations is thinking. Thinking is distinguished from other human mental operations (all of which are symbolic) by its explicitly symbolic character:  because of its explicit or declarative character it allows the mind to be conscious of its own consciousness, that is, conscious of itself. “I think, therefore I am”: thinking is constitutive of the thinking mind. Both logically and empirically, Descartes’ postulate is obviously true. This is the only thing of

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which we can be certain. A bit of introspection and skepticism in regard to established authority is all that is needed to reach these conclusions. The will performs the function of arbitrage in the mind, deciding which of the always multiple possible meanings to assign to symbols the mind is processing. Willed action is arbitrary, intentional action, by definition: it is in this sense that will is (by definition) free. But this freedom has very little in common with the freedom to do as one wants. Incidentally, ancient philosophers had the notion of will in the sense of arbitrage (which Arendt claims was no notion of will at all). It would be very puzzling, indeed, if someone so introspective and sensitive to everything empirical (every experience) like Aristotle lacked such a notion, because, even if most acts of will are unconscious in the sense of not being explicitly thought about, we feel (thus experience) their being willed. In fact, not feeling this is a symptom of schizophrenia. The meanings that we process while thinking are, therefore, necessarily mediated by the will; these activities are not independent of each other and not even autonomous. The symbolic reality of the mind and culture is indeed autonomous, but all the human mental operations obey the laws of this reality. Thinking and willing are conditioned by identity –​a core element in the life of the mind that Arendt does not mention. Identity refers to the individual’s position on the symbolic terrain, indicating the choice of and ranking meanings between which the will may arbitrate. An important facet of the self, it is constituted in relation with the specific surrounding culture and channels the influence of this culture on one’s thought, shaping attitudes, encouraging doubt and creativity in regard to certain established notions and conformity to others, affecting both the questions one asks and the answers one gives to them. Arendt’s identity –​and through it, German culture –​played a crucial role in her life of the mind. Before the emergence of modern science, which happened in seventeenth-​ century England, all philosophers who were not exclusively religious thinkers (and such would not define themselves as “lovers of wisdom”) considered themselves involved in a scientific conversation; they all wanted to understand empirical reality. This changed only with the formation of the academic system (and with it the profession of professors of philosophy) in Germany of the eighteenth century. The rest of us imported the academic discipline of philosophy from Germany. Philosophers before the discipline had to and did keep pace with the development of science. Academic philosophers do not have to and do not. This naturally makes and keeps the philosophical problematic outdated. Insofar as the central fields of metaphysics and epistemology are concerned (that is, the fields within which Arendt places her Life of the Mind), their problems –​in the sense of the questions they ask, as well as their inability to

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offer any answers to these questions –​begin with their ignorance of biology. Biology is important for two reasons: One, man is an animal. While much of what we know (or think) about man cannot be reduced to this fundamental fact, everything we know (or think) must be consistent with it. Lacking updated knowledge about animal nature is a significant obstacle in understanding that part of human nature that cannot be explained by it. Knowledge, if it is reliable (and thinking, if it is more than “empty thought-​things”), about man above human biology can only begin where biology stops. To establish this all-​ important point we must start from comparing men with other animal species. This comparison allows us to explain the mind and focuses our attention on its core processes and the nature of their interdependence. Two, as important as such empirical knowledge is the dramatic transformation in our fundamental ontology introduced by Darwin’s Origins of the Species and consistently justified by the prodigious development of biology since. For what the theory of evolution by means of natural selection makes clear is that thinking in terms of two worlds, on which the philosophical tradition Arendt identifies as “ours” –​and her own thought –​is based, is neither necessary nor useful. An historical phenomenon, as all our traditions are, dating back 2,500 years, it has long outlived its usefulness. So long as thinking about life continued within this framework, its understanding could not develop and biology remained purely descriptive: biological phenomena had to be either reduced to physical, material phenomena, which proved logically impossible, or attributed to some metaphysical élan vital beyond the empirically accessible. Darwin proved that life was autonomous, evolving according to its own, organic, laws, irreducible to the laws of material reality but perfectly consistent with them. This simply made the “two worlds” beside the point insofar as phenomena of life were concerned, making possible to conceive a completely different ontology. The first to discern the implications of the Darwinian revolution in thinking for mental phenomena was Durkheim. His precocious argument that social facts (i.e., ways of thinking and acting) were analogous to biological facts was misinterpreted and dismissed as biological reductionism. What he suggested, however, was that the phenomena of the mind, like those of life, belonged, in terms that were to appear later, to an emergent layer of reality, irreducible to, but consistent with and dependent on the layers underneath it. It is impossible to say whether Weber was also aware that the evolutionary theory transcended the 2,500-​year-​old thinking in terms of two worlds, making it irrelevant for the understanding of empirical reality. But he too treated the realm of the mental as autonomous, obviously related but irreducible to the biological or physical worlds and eminently deserving of its own science. A brilliant student of philosophy, Arendt was taught to consider science irrelevant. But what, in the end, kept her resistant to the most profound

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transformations in thinking under way in her youth and moored in the nationally biased tradition which by her university days had separated itself from all experience was something far more personal. She was very much a product of German culture, that is, unlike Weber, for instance, she was not sensitive to its contradictions and offered its dominant trends no resistance. The culture through which she saw herself was profoundly anti-​Semitic. But she happened to be Jewish. She did not like the Jewish element of her identity, seeking continuously to downplay it and emphasize –​in her own mind, in the ongoing process of identity constitution –​its German elements. Philosophy was a very German thing to study (already Engels insisted that “the Germans” held the names of their great philosophers “as the glory of their nation” which was “philosophical” to start with5), far more than psychology or psychiatry. Psychiatric insights of Karl Jaspers, Arendt’s teacher and loyal friend, are striking in their absence in The Life of the Mind. Arendt’s love life reflected a similar bias: evidently, she found it difficult to be attracted to Jewish men, and was drawn to Germans. (Human sexual attraction, in distinction from that of animals, is an act of will and as such directly tied to one’s identity. This is why we generally find attractive people defined as attractive in our culture.) To be sexually desired by the leading German philosopher  –​what could be more affirmative of her Germanity? In response to Heidegger’s dalliance, Arendt fell in love. Arguably, he remained the central figure in her life. The rest is history, and the major part of it is the Holocaust. Her love for a man who joined –​and cooperated with –​what could only be defined as the forces of evil must have appeared as a tremendous error of judgment. She understood that it was related to her rejection of her Jewishness: clearly, she saw herself in Rahel Varnhagen, the subject of her first book, subtitled “The Life of a Jewess.” The 20-​year-​long delay in its publication might have been due to her realization that blaming this error on the impossible situation of German Jews, which made them hate themselves, still recognized it as an error of judgment. It would be much better to prove to the world and to herself that it was not. What was needed for that was to justify Heidegger. It is quite possible that Arendt began doing this as early as The Origins of Totalitarianism: the unprecedented nature of the phenomenon, which offered at least two simultaneous examples in Russia (of which Arendt knew extremely little) and in Germany, already exculpated German culture and its intellectuals. It is certain that this was behind the argument of Eichmann in Jerusalem. Perhaps, Arendt hoped that Eichmann’s vapidity was proof enough that someone so strikingly different from him as Heidegger could in no way be associated with the evil of his deeds. But the concept of the “banality of evil” seemed to trivialize the deeds more than the doer. Moreover, putting some of the blame on the victims backfired: this overshadowed the argument of the

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“banality of evil” and rendered it unpersuasive. So, in The Life of the Mind, at the age of 65, Arendt met the problem head-​on. She decided to spell out why a philosopher who dedicates himself to the search for meaning cannot be evil and deserves to be loved. It did not work. There is much more to the life of the mind than The Life of the Mind would have us believe. Of this the work of Hannah Arendt, starting with Rahel Varnhagen and ending with The Life of the Mind, offers a convincing proof.

Notes 1 TLOTM, 1.169. On Arendt’s attitude to the social sciences, see Baehr (2010c). 2 We also know that even works that explicitly mention “thinking” sometime have very little to teach us about it and might not be particularly useful for a sociology of thinking, were such special area of study to emerge; see Swedberg (2010). Of course, thinking is central to the discipline of sociology as a whole, because, on the one hand –​so at least one dearly hopes –​sociologists, too, think when they ply their trade, and, on the other, engaging in thinking is one of the main distinguishing features of humanity, which constitutes the subject matter of all social sciences. 3 “The German Ideology.” 4 Weber, op. cit., p. 4. 5 An 1843 paper written in English for an Owenite publication, Marx-​Engels Collected Works (International Publishers, New  York/​ Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, vol. 3, 406).

References Arendt, Hannah. 1979. The Life of the Mind (two-​volume edition). New York: Harcourt Brace. Baehr, Peter. 2010c. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bloch, Marc. 1953. The Historian’s Craft, 60–​65. New York: Putnam. Durkheim, Emile. 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: The Free Press. Einstein, Albert. 1979. Albert Einstein: Autobiographical Notes, 7. Translated and edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp. La Salle, IL: Open Court. —​—​—​. 1922. “Geometry and Experience.” In Sidelights on Relativity. trans. G. B. Jeffrey and W. Perrret, London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, p. 28. Swedberg, Richard. 2010. “Thinking and Sociology.” Journal of Classical Sociology 11(1), 1–​19. Weber, Max. 1978b. “Basic Sociological Terms.” In Economy and Society, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (two volumes). 4–​63. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Chapter 6 HANNAH ARENDT ON THINKING, PERSONHOOD AND MEANING Philip Walsh

Introduction The human capacity to think was of enduring interest to Hannah Arendt. Her observations on the efforts of totalitarian ideologies to destroy thinking (1994b, 350), her urgent proposal in the introduction to The Human Condition to “think what we are doing” (1998, 5) and her later reflections on Adolf Eichmann’s incapacity to think, all attest to its ongoing importance to her. But whereas in the earlier books this interest is subordinated to her concern with politics and human action, in her last works it becomes her overt concern, culminating in a series of lectures, later organized into the essays collected in Responsibility and Judgment (2003a) and reworked as the first volume of the (uncompleted) trilogy that makes up The Life of the Mind (1979). It is worth asking: Why should sociologists care about this portion of Arendt’s writings? Surely, theories of mental activity are the purview of psychologists, philosophers and cognitive scientists, and their sociological import is likely to be small or ancillary to questions of social action. But this reply ignores the extensive history of sociological thinking about inner life, as well as more recent theories of mental activity that have assumed particular importance among sociologists, especially critical realists. The latter have argued for a stronger conception of the mental capacities required to understand personhood within sociology generally (Smith, 2013). They have emphasized the capacity for reflexivity and internal conversation (Archer, 2003, 2007, 2012), arguing that theories of mental activity cannot be kept outside of sociology, since such activities are themselves socially mediated and lie at the roots of social action. If these claims are taken seriously, then Arendt’s theory of mental activity also bears greater scrutiny by sociologists, since she advances an original and extensive account of the structure of mental activity, especially the capacity to think. This chapter discusses Arendt’s

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explorations of the phenomenon of thinking in the context of her general theory of mental activity, as this is presented primarily in her later essays collected in the posthumous collection, Responsibility and Judgment. Although these essays anticipate some of the themes taken up in The Life of the Mind, they are more closely linked with her earlier writings and to some extent avoid the philosophical baggage that obscures many of her insights in the latter work. The first section of this chapter discusses the background to Responsibility and Judgment, particularly Arendt’s controversial claims linking thinking to moral conduct. The following section discusses her more general conclusions about the activity of thinking, and the chapter concludes with an account of their significance for recent sociological theories of mental activity.

Thinking and Morality In 1961, Hannah Arendt attended the trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann. Her report, initially published as a series of articles in The New Yorker and later as Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963a), was extremely contentious. As Judith Adler in this volume shows, the book managed to offend almost everyone, but Arendt’s core claim –​that Eichmann’s actions stemmed from an incapacity to think, grounded in a wilful refusal to consider “what he was doing” –​became an irresistible lure for academic and political commentators. Her characterization of Eichmann in terms of the “banality of evil,” though much misunderstood, provoked a controversy that has doomed (or blessed) the book to perpetual contestation. The fact that three generations have now weighed in on the controversial portrait of Eichmann without, for the most part, considering how Arendt’s thinking about Eichmann developed subsequent to the “report,” has made it much more difficult to distill its insights. Yet, as these later writings demonstrate, Arendt used the Eichmann case to make claims that were quite distinct from the “banality of evil” hypothesis. She extrapolated from the case of Eichmann to suggest that the capacity to think was linked to the capacity to act morally, or at least to resist incentives to immoral conduct. The problem for Arendt was that Eichmann was a poor test case for this hypothesis. Her portrait of him (as Adler shows) was based on an inadequate knowledge of materials relating to his time in Argentina and on attendance of only a fraction of the court sessions of his trial. Eichmann was indeed much more monstrous and less banal than Arendt characterized him as being (Stangneth 2014). But the shortcomings of her insights into Eichmann aside, Arendt also used the case to make claims about morality that can best be understood in sociological terms. She argued that the horrors that beset Central Europe in the mid-​twentieth century precipitated a moral crisis not simply with respect to

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the actors involved, but with respect to the institution of morality per se. How was it possible for so many ordinary Germans to have shed their most fundamental moral restraints so easily? The disturbing fact, Arendt argued, was that “[m]‌orality collapsed into a mere set of mores –​manners, customs, conventions to be changed at will –​not with criminals, but with ordinary people, who, as long as moral standards were socially accepted, never dreamt of doubting what they had been taught to believe in” ([1994c] 2003, 54). Arendt’s attempt to account for this fact led her to an investigation that was largely independent of the individual case of Eichmann. Arendt’s hypothetical link between morality and thinking therefore grew out of her reflections on morality as a social institution. These reflections were most thoroughly developed in a lecture course delivered at the New School for Social Research in 1965–​66, and subsequently reworked and published posthumously as the central chapter in Responsibility and Judgment, titled “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy.” This concerns less moral philosophy per se, than the questions that moral philosophers have tried to solve, which are not simply “philosophical,” but central to the ordinary, everyday morality that –​at least to Arendt’s generation of Germans –​was taken for granted before the Nazi seizure of power. Indeed, Arendt emphasizes that it was precisely this taken-​for-​granted quality of morality that made its inversion under Nazi rule so shocking. But the essay is aptly titled insofar as it raises many questions about morality, while offering few definite answers. Throughout, Arendt stresses the uncertain hold that morality exerts over human conduct, as well as the disagreements among philosophers about its source and meaning. At the same time, she draws attention to the existence of moral exemplars, or personalities, and to the very widespread conviction that right and wrong must have some firm basis beyond the mere conventionalism of everyday norms (50). These observations, she notes, are inspired partly by the very fact that morality, understood as a bedrock set of fundamental convictions about right and wrong, seemed so entrenched before the Nazi seizure of power. “How strange and frightening,” she asks, when “it suddenly appeared that the very terms we use to designate these things –​‘morality,’ with its Latin origin, and ‘ethics,’ with its Greek origin –​should never have meant more than usages and habits” (50). This leads Arendt, in the early part of the essay, to consider the various doctrines drawn up to secure or improve morality. These are primarily of two kinds, religious and philosophical. Historically, religion provided the strongest basis for the systems of norms that governed people’s modes of everyday life. This basis was vested in the restraining power of obedience: “The obligatory character of the good for man lies in God’s command” (66). Elsewhere, Arendt also emphasizes the fear of hell as a potent element in the authority structure

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of revealed religion (1993a, 133). She also speculates, with some misgivings, about the effects of the withdrawal of such a powerful restraint on human desire and volition, drawing on Nietzsche’s insight that a society in which God is truly dead has forsaken certain limitations that previous generations took for granted.1 Nevertheless, secular modernity,2 in which religion does not necessarily disappear but becomes an entirely private matter ([1994c] 2003, 64), does no more than return us to the situation of antiquity in which morality was understood as a human affair, independent of religious sanction. This is also why, after Kant, moral philosophy regained its role as the discourse in which moral problems came to be addressed and understood as problems of human relationships, rather than as relations to the divine. Arendt does not dismiss the importance of religion as a persistent feature of human societies, but she notes that its significance for understanding the collapse of morality under Nazism is “virtually nil” because, when this occurred, it “played hardly any role” (63). This was not because of any especially vulnerable feature of the belief structure of Christianity, but because the power of religion to regulate morality through the command–​obedience relation had already decayed, long before events in Germany brought about the crisis in morality with which Arendt grapples. Indeed, she seems to accept that conventional standards of responsibility, the rule of law and social trust had been relatively successfully institutionalized in secularized national societies by the end of the nineteenth century, and that they had not been notably correlated with more intrastate violence, crime or interpersonal animus than societies in which the social contract is based on religious sanction.3 While Weimar Germany faced distinctive problems with its social order, the dominant code of interpersonal ethics still appeared secure, or at least no less secure than in neighboring countries, notably France. The conventional character of everyday morality and the reemergence of moral philosophy in the modern world are therefore features of secularization. Both moral philosophy after Kant and conventional morality eschew obedience as the locus of moral conduct. However, both retain a central role for obligation. In both “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy” and the other key essay in Responsibility and Judgment, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Arendt considers this association at length. Philosophically, she regards the most fully elaborated philosophical expression of the principle of obligation –​ Kant’s conception of the moral law as binding on all rational beings  –​as coercive and in conflict with the principle of autonomy that underlies it. In the sphere of everyday life, she also argues that obligation proved as effective in grounding and legitimating patently immoral conduct under Nazi rule as it had been for conventional morality under Weimar. Conventional morality-​as-​ obligation consists in following sets of rules, and a frighteningly large number of people in Nazi Germany, she argues, were apparently able to replace one

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set of rules (“thou shalt not kill”) with its opposite (“thou shalt kill”) with no more difficulty than it would take to come to terms with a new set of rules governing table manners. This was a central point that she took up from the Eichmann case:  that many people accepted the reversal in the meaning of moral rules that they had previously taken for granted, and that they did so without much difficulty. Given Arendt’s robust and controversial claims about Eichmann and also about ordinary Germans during the Nazi period, it is worth recalling some initial qualifications to them. Arendt never argued that everyone accepted the “reversibility” of ordinary morality, a claim codified in the idea that Eichmann was a kind of Everyman, and that Arendt explicitly denied. Nor did she subscribe to the related thesis, most closely associated with Daniel Goldhagen (1996), that such reversibility was specific to Germany.4 On the contrary, she points out that many people professed to accept the new morality out of fear, or because they found it politically expedient, or because it advanced their careers. Many others did so because it gave them the opportunity to commit acts that they knew perfectly well were criminal. The defendants at the Frankfurt Trial, which ran from 20 December 1963 to 19 August 1965, and which Arendt treats in detail in the essay “Auschwitz on Trial” (also contained in Responsibility and Judgment), were prime examples of this. They were entirely aware of their “monstrous deeds,” as manifested in their “grotesquely unrepentant, aggressive behaviour” in the court ([1966a] 2003, 227). Arendt was concerned, then, only with a quite specific segment of the population, those who unthinkingly accepted the “new morality,” and who were neither the norm nor very exceptional. These were people of a particular type (among whom Eichmann could not, in fact, be counted) who were not ordinary criminals but rather very ordinary people who committed crimes with more or less enthusiasm, simply because they did what they had been told to do. Among them, there were also ordinary criminals who could do with impunity under the Nazi system what they had always wanted to do; but much as the sadists and perverts stood in the limelight in the publicity of these trials, in our context they are of less interest. ([1994c] 2003, 59)

The significance of these insights cannot properly be understood outside the context of Arendt’s consideration of another group of actors, those “few, who in the moral collapse of Nazi Germany remained completely intact and free of all guilt” (78). The “consciences” of this group, she notes, did not feel an obligation, but acted according to something which was self-​evident to them even though it was no longer self-​evident to those around them.

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Hence their conscience, if that is what it was, had no obligatory character, it said, “This I can’t do,” rather than, “This I ought not to do.” (78)

These actors were constrained, then, not by their relationships to others (in the form of a feeling of obligation), but by their relationship to themselves, in the form of the “self-​evidence” of right and wrong. Arendt accentuates this point by noting the original intersection of linguistic meaning –​manifest in Latin, Greek and French –​between conscience and consciousness. This suggests an original unity between “knowing oneself ” and recognizing right from wrong, and is opposed to the idea of a separate moral faculty, aligned with the will and responding to the power of obligation. She continues in the same vein by contrasting moral thinkers who emphasize self-​relation as the locus of morality, such as Socrates and Kant, with those who emphasize relationship with others, such as Jesus of Nazareth and Saint Francis. In summing up her reflections on those who managed to avoid moral taint under Nazi rule, Arendt notes that we might call [these people] moral personalities, but this is almost a redundancy; the quality of being a person, as distinguished from merely being human, is not among the individual properties, gifts, talents or shortcomings, with which men are born, and which they may use or abuse. An individual’s personal quality is precisely his “moral” quality. (79)

How, then, does one “become a person”? It is in answering this question that the capacity to think comes to the fore, and Arendt’s fullest reflections on it appear in the first volume of The Life of the Mind. Her main example here is Socrates. She chooses Socrates, she tells us, not because of his fame as a philosopher, but as someone “who counted himself neither among the many nor among the few” (1979, 1.167). He was, simply, “a citizen among citizens” who was, nevertheless, a virtuoso at thinking. But he did not think in order to acquire wisdom or knowledge, or –​she argues –​to influence the actions of those around him. “Socrates’ dialogues are all aporetic exercises. The argument either leads nowhere or it goes around in circles” (1.170). Socrates is interested in thinking as an end in itself, Arendt contends –​not as a means to other ends (which, as we shall see, is crucial to Arendt’s conception of what thinking is). It is in the thinking activity, Arendt suggests, that we constitute ourselves as persons, capable of internal conversations with our own selves. Indeed, thinking is inner dialogue, a conversation that the self carries out with itself, in the same (or similar) manner as our conversations with others. This is contrary, perhaps, to our intuitions about thinking, which tend to make use of ocular metaphors, such as introspection or reflection. However, it is in accord

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with sociological accounts of thinking, in which George Herbert Mead’s conception of the self as ongoing communicative action between an “I” and a “Me” remains the dominant model.5 Yet Socrates is also clearly a “moral personality.” He was willing to “lay down his life not for any specific belief or doctrine –​he had none –​but simply for the right to go about examining the opinions of other people, thinking about them and asking his interlocutors to do the same” (1.168). Arendt also quotes two Socratic maxims: “It is better for me to suffer wrong than to do wrong,” and “It is better that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict me” ([1971b] 2003, 181). These sound like moral maxims, and are, of course, echoed to some extent in religious teachings and moral philosophy. But in their specifically Socratic sense, they are intended to point to the fact that someone who thinks has to live with himself, and that this places restraints on the kinds of acts he can permit himself to commit. In contrast, those who never think never have to confront themselves and are thereby unrestrained in their actions (they are “actually ready to do anything” ([1994c] 2003, 94)). The process of self-​constitution inherent in thinking is, therefore, at the same time the source of our moral sense: “The moral precept rises out of the thinking activity itself. [It] is the implied condition of the silent dialogue between me and myself ” (93). But morality is not the intended function of thinking; it is, as Arendt puts it, a “side-​effect.” Although “no matter what thought-​trains the thinking ego thinks through, the self that we all are must take care not to do anything that would make it impossible for the two-​in-​one to be friends and live in harmony” (1979, 1.191). To summarize then: Arendt rejects the idea that morality derives from the command–​obedience relation to a deity, or from obligation, either to others (altruism) or to oneself (Kant’s categorical imperative). Morality is sutured into the self-​relation that thinking, understood as inner dialogue, establishes. This is why the term “moral personality” is redundant; personality and morality are co-​constitutive, and this is also why Arendt thinks that the “greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies,” that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons. Within the framework of this conceptualization, we could say that wrongdoers who refuse to think by themselves what they are doing and who also refuse in retrospect to think about it, that is, go back and remember what they did (which is tushuvah or repentance), have actually failed to constitute themselves as somebodies. By stubbornly remaining nobodies they prove themselves unfit for intercourse with others who, good, bad, or indifferent, are at the very least persons. ([1994c] 2003, 112)

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This means that persons can in fact choose to be wicked (and Arendt cites Shakespeare’s Richard III as an example), but non-​persons (nobodies) cannot. The choice to be wicked implies that one does in fact understand the difference between right and wrong. Nobodies refuse to put themselves in the position from which such understanding would in fact be possible. Hence, Arendt’s conclusion that “most evil is done by people who never made up their mind to be either bad or good” ([1994c] 2003, 180). This does not, of course, exculpate them; but it changes the kinds of judgments that we should bring to understanding their actions. How should we evaluate Arendt’s hypothesized link between thinking and morality? It is likely that people employed in higher education feel instinctively sympathetic to the idea that thinking is connected to moral conduct, given their professional ideologies. Nevertheless, it is hard to find much evidence for it. Nazism was –​contrary to Arendt’s own analysis –​a social movement that drew its support from a wide base within German society as a whole (Baehr 2010, 53). Many intellectuals, civil servants and cultural intermediaries  –​people with extensive education and, as a set of social strata, perhaps more appreciation for “thinking” than in any country in the world at the time –​threw in their lot with the Nazis. Notable among these was, of course, Martin Heidegger, the philosopher who had supposedly “reinvented thinking” in Germany in the 1920s, training Arendt herself, and who accepted the rectorship of Freiburg University and joined the Nazi Party in May 1933. More concretely, social scientists have pointed less to cognitive than to emotional or situational factors in explaining the actions of those who resisted collaboration in situations of extreme moral hazard. According to Frederico Varese and Meir Yaish, for example, those who offered to help Jews escape in Europe during World War II did so not out of any clear “self-​evidence” of conscience, but simply because they were asked to help (2000). Through a different, “motivational” lens, Jon Elster considers shame, and fear of shame, an important element in understanding morality. Emotions that derive from one’s moral standing in the eyes of others in general are part of a palette of motivational factors that he cites as central to understanding the “regulation of behavior,” including moral conduct (1999, 154). Kwame Anthony Appiah makes a similar argument in his general historical argument about “moral revolutions” (2011). By drawing on a range of historical examples, he argues for the centrality of a similarly “self-​conscious” emotion, that of honor, in inspiring “moral revolutions.” These include the abolition of slavery, the decline of dueling and the extinction of foot-​binding. Like Elster, Appiah considers crucial the responses to peer-​judgment or “honor worlds.” Both Elster and Appiah, then, marshal persuasive evidence to link morals with emotions, particularly with “self-​conscious” experiences like shame and honor.

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These objections (and others could be cited) do not, I  think, invalidate Arendt’s hypothesis, but they point to some of its shortcomings. Evidence, as we will see later, for whether people think is unlikely to be easily available, since it is intrinsically, as she points out, such a “resultless” activity. The case of Heidegger is problematic in all kinds of ways, but Arendt insists that philosophical thinking is not the object of her interest, and that very “intelligent” people are just as likely to be incapable of thinking as anyone else. With respect to the role of situation and emotion in the cultivation of morality, it is true that Arendt had little time for such considerations, and this constitutes a serious and persistent blind spot in her understanding of human affairs. Her preference for solidarity over pity, for example, was enunciated with something like disgust for the latter, and vociferously defended in her writings on revolution and politics. On the other hand, social emotions such as shame and honor do not necessarily have the kind of explanatory power that their defenders sometimes claim, since there is no inherent normative valence to them. They are only effective where morality as an institution exists as a consensual set of practices, within a “circle of practitioners” or an “honor world.” But there is no reason why such worlds cannot coalesce around norms that are the opposite of what we think of as moral conduct, and this kind of reversal was precisely what Arendt undertook to confront and explain. The “situational” arguments Varese and Yaish advanced are subject to the same kind of objection. They do not tell us much about morality as an institution, but only about people’s response to others’ expectations and existing rules, the moral valence of which may be up for grabs. All this suggests that there is no explanatory either/​or between Arendt’s emphasis on the link between thinking and morality and alternative explanations. It is likely that a range of human capacities, both cognitive and emotional, are linked to moral conduct. But there is also no either/​or between the two groups that Arendt analyzes specifically. There are the “nobodies,” who refuse to think, and the “moral personalities” who make this the center of their existence. But, of course, most people are neither. This points to the fact that Arendt is concerned with two groups with comparatively rare psychological outlooks, although both groups assumed outsized importance under the conditions of totalitarian rule.

What Is Thinking? In the Introduction to Thinking, Arendt reframes conclusions reached in her earlier studies. She asks:  “Could the activity of thinking as such … be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-​doing, or even actually ‘condition them against it?’ ” (1979, 1.5). But, by the time Arendt

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came to deliver the Gifford Lectures in 1970, on which the book is based, her interest in thinking had become more detached from the overtly moral framework of the main essays in Responsibility and Judgment, and more focused on understanding thinking as a distinct human capacity among others. Much effort is deployed, in the two volumes of The Life of the Mind that she completed, to distinguishing mental activities as distinct phenomena. This approach is reminiscent of her project in The Human Condition,6 which is devoted to differentiating among action, fabrication and labor as distinct and distinctive human activities. The Life of the Mind attempts something similar in distinguishing thinking from willing and judging, and in insisting on their irreducibility to each other or to some other more fundamental mental capacity, or to “brain states.” Although the book begins with the question about the link between thinking and moral action, Thinking mostly addresses different questions. It asks first, what thinking is and second what makes us think in the first place. These questions are stranger than they would appear, because Arendt had some rather specific things in mind in posing them. I here discuss her “thinking about thinking” in terms of its capacity to generate meaning and its distinctiveness vis-​à-​ vis other mental capacities before turning to the second question of what makes us think. A quotation from Heidegger at the beginning of Thinking sets the stage for Arendt’s inquiries:  “Thinking does not bring knowledge, as do the sciences. Thinking does not produce usable practical wisdom. Thinking does not solve the riddles of the universe. Thinking does not endow us directly with the power to act.” Arendt adds some further qualifications: Thinking is not the same thing as contemplation, the traditional goal of philosophers and spiritualists of various hues. Neither is thinking the same thing as meditation. Perhaps most counterintuitively to most people, Arendt suggests that thinking is also not the same thing as deliberating; the latter is tied to worldly activity –​ fabrication or action –​which Arendt treats in detail in The Human Condition. Thinking, like deliberation, however –​and, perhaps, unlike the other cognate terms –​is an “everyday” activity, within the range of every human being and immediately comprehensible to every normal person. Therefore, she avers, “we should be able to demand its exercise from every sane person no matter how ignorant or erudite, intelligent or stupid he may happen to be” (1979, 1.13). Her concentration on philosophers and philosophy in Thinking, however, seems hard to reconcile with this view, and some of her best insights about thinking as an “everyday” activity are to be gleaned, again, from Responsibility and Judgment. In “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” she emphasizes that “thinking in this nontechnical sense is certainly no prerogative of any special kind of men, philosophers or scientists, etc. –​you find it present in all

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walks of life and may find it entirely absent in what we call intellectuals –​it cannot be denied that it certainly is much less frequent than Socrates supposed, although one hopes a bit more frequent than Plato feared” ([1971b] 2003, 94). As discussed earlier, Arendt regards thinking as a process of listening and speaking, of conversation with oneself, and cites Socrates as an exemplar of this activity. Arendt insists that Socrates’ thinking is not aligned with truth-​ seeking, or with acting. Rather it is oriented exclusively to meaning. It is the very resultlessness –​its resistance to being instrumentalized in the service of a further end –​that allows thinking to generate meaning. To expect truth to come from meaning signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know. Thinking can and must be employed in the attempt to know, but in the exercise of this function it is never itself; it is but the handmaiden of an altogether different enterprise. (1979, 1.61)

In other words, like its role in “conditioning” people toward right moral conduct, the role of thinking in knowing is contingent. Thinking as a distinct activity is not in the service of any further end. It is no more for acting morally than it is for knowing. But this makes thinking a highly elusive activity; if it is never itself instantiated in the practices of knowing or acting, how can we identify it as a real phenomenon independent of these practices? Arendt does not deny the difficulty (1979, 1.167), but insists that the reality of thinking can be detected, offering three pieces of evidence: The universally available experience of turning attention to the contents of one’s own mind; the withdrawal from time, space and body-​consciousness this induces, and which visibly distracts people from the stream of everyday experience; and the tendency to attribute a parallel reality to the experience of thinking, manifested in the “two worlds” theories that dominate the history of philosophy.7 Whatever social scientists might think of this evidence, few beyond the most determined structuralists (e.g., Stephen Fuchs, see Smith, 2013, 258–​59) would doubt that thinking is a genuine phenomenon.8 There is no problem explaining this via an ontologically dualist theory of mind, in which mental activity is acknowledged as possessing a first-​person mode of existence, and which explains how it can be mistaken for a “separate world” (see Searle, 1998, 42). The problem with Arendt’s account is the difficulty of detaching “pure” thinking from knowing, understanding, deliberating, or any of the other closely related mental capacities with which thinking is entwined –​and to which it is (usually) subordinated. The idea that a kind of pure thinking exists, unmoored from any subjective interest or concern, seems to run contrary to the tenor of many of Arendt’s other writings.9 Neither, we should

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note, is her attempt to make this conception concrete in her interpretation of Socrates as utterly uninterested in questions of truth, but only in the meaningfulness of the process of inquiry, particularly convincing. But Arendt did not need to insist on the reality of “pure” thinking in order to make her most salient point. This is simply that we do not need examples, or transcendental deductions, of its existence in unalloyed forms to analytically distinguish thinking from other mental activities. Therefore, we can insist that thinking is not the same thing as knowing, understanding, deliberating and so forth, without having to accept that it is ever manifested as “pure” thinking. This point, particularly in relation to deliberation, has important consequences, and elucidates the connection between thinking and meaning. Arendt discusses deliberation (briefly) in the second volume of The Life of the Mind as a distinct and separate faculty, tied closely to willing, rather than thinking. The last book Arendt wrote, Willing is often obscure to the point of inscrutability,10 but there are some notable highlights. One of these is the intriguing claim that the capacity for willing is not a universal human capacity. Arendt suggests that the self-​experience which we characterize in terms of willing was rarer or different in ancient societies than in our own. As she notes, one finds no straightforward correlate for the word “will” in ancient languages. Deliberation, on the other hand, is a human universal and refers to the capacity to arbitrate between different means to given ends. “Nobody deliberates and chooses health or happiness as his aim, though we may think about them” (1.62). In other words, deliberation is a mental capacity that came to be tied to willing, to the “power to act” and to consciousness of the future.11 Like all activity that is oriented to means, this denudes it of any capacity to itself generate meaning, although surely it may play a large role in the enactment of meaningful action. We can see in this insistence on the distinction between deliberation and thinking, Arendt’s distinctive reworking of Max Weber’s famous ideal-​ typical contrast between instrumental/purposive and substantive rationality. According to Weber, the eclipse of the latter by the former leads to the erosion of meaning, insofar as the “ultimate ends” of human life become increasingly obscured behind technical imperatives. Arendt confronts this issue in The Human Condition where she convicts utilitarianism (both philosophical and as the societal norm that carries instrumental rationality into all areas of life) of “an innate incapacity to understand the distinction between utility and meaningfulness, which we express linguistically by distinguishing between ‘in order to’ and ‘for the sake of ’ ” (1998, 154). A society, she notes, in which “[t]‌he ‘in order to’ has become the content of the ‘for the sake of ’ … generates meaninglessness” (154). The growing dominance of the ideal of utility (which is the normative frame of homo faber) threatens the capacity to distinguish between

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these two motivations. Arendt is less fatalistic about the inevitability of this eclipse than was Weber, or were her Weber-​inspired contemporaries, Adorno and Marcuse. She suggests that thinking about the ends of our actions is a human need.12 If so, we could conclude that while not everyone is likely to be susceptible to it, it is unlikely to disappear. The contrast between meaningfulness and instrumentality –​the “for the sake of ” and the “in order to” –​then, is replicated in that between thinking and deliberation. These are human capacities that deal with ends and means respectively. But the two are relatively autonomous from each other, existing as capacities occupying distinct positions within Arendt’s tripartite model of mind. Thinking does not have to lead to any kind of willed project in the world, and, in a purely utilitarian way, deliberation can proceed to action without any reference to the realm of meaning with which thinking concerns itself.

What Makes Us Think? In turning to this question, Arendt initially insists that she is uninterested in “causes or purposes” (1.129). As unsurprising as her dismissal of these supposedly crude tools of the social sciences may be, it is also not quite accurate. Thinking purports to provide three answers to the question of what makes people think, and all three could be interpreted as either causes or purposes, although only the third, that which Socrates provides, is actually given credence. The “Greek” answer to what makes us think is in fact Plato’s, and is, simply, wonder (thaumezien) “at everything that is as it is” (1998, 273). But, as Arendt points out, this “noble” emotion is hardly universal –​and indeed is specifically restricted to the motivation to philosophize.13 It therefore could hardly count as the spring for the “everyday” activity of thinking with which she is concerned. Neither is the Roman answer adequate. Arendt takes the Stoic doctrines of Epictetus as representative of this answer. These are all practical maxims that recommend a mental turning inward as a response to worldly pain and suffering, in order to induce ataraxia, or freedom from disturbance. But this activity is not thinking, Arendt suggests, but a “phenomenon of the will,” an action “in which you acted in unison with no-​one, which was supposed to change nothing but your self ” (1979, 1.154). And, once again, this is an answer supplied by a philosopher and therefore cannot be taken seriously as a genuine reply. Socrates, Arendt suggests, provides us with a different response because he does not offer it from the standpoint of philosophy, and indeed, as we noted earlier, Socrates does not offer a doctrine, but only an ongoing aporetic questioning. But Socrates’ reply to the question of what makes people think is, ultimately, he himself –​the gadfly who manages to disturb people into questioning their assumptions by talking

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“about piety, justice, courage and the rest”(1.171). It is difficult to see, however, how this does not beg the question, which then becomes “What makes Socrates think?” Arendt provides no straightforward answer to this, but clearly part of such an answer would have to be the social conditions under which Socrates’ questioning takes place, that is, the marketplace. In other words, among the conditions that foster thinking are such social ones as the existence of public spaces in which people can be disturbed into thinking. Socrates –​in striking contrast to Plato, who prefers his study –​requires a public space, where communication can take place in relative immunity from politics, not only for his external conversations, but also his internal ones. Totalitarianism provides an obvious example of social conditions that militate against thinking, and Arendt emphasized this feature in many of her writings on the topic. The question of the social conditions of thinking marks a further point of continuity between Arendt’s insights and sociology. Sociologists, after all, tend to affirm that individuals are always already situated socially, that their individuality and agency are not walled off from either the constraints or enablements that society imposes on one hand, nor from their sources in the socializing power of others. This applies to such supposedly “private” activities as thinking and the capacity to tell right from wrong as well, as Arendt clearly recognizes. Nevertheless, when she broaches the question of how such socialization occurs, her answer again seems question-​begging. It is, ultimately, she suggests, a matter of “taste,” of “aesthetic decisions” about “our choice of company, of those with whom we wish to spend our lives. And again, this company is chosen by thinking in examples, in examples of people dead or alive, real or fictitious, and in examples of incidents, past or present” ([1994c] 2003, 145–​46). This response signals the missing element in Arendt’s entire model of mental activity: her conception of judging, fragments of which appear in Responsibility and Judgment, and in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1982), but which can hardly be said to provide a clear vision of how the third volume of The Life of the Mind would have turned out. Even apart from this lacuna, however, Arendt’s vision of the social conditions of thinking remains too wedded to an account of thinking, personhood and non-​personhood as individual accomplishments or refusals. The ways in which personhood is constituted is less a decision than Arendt could bring herself to admit. Moreover, Arendt’s vision of both thinking and morality is too intellectualized, ignoring the emotional and communicative dimensions of socialization, and rejecting the indissoluble entwinement of thinking with other human capacities. The way to develop her insights is to connect them to other attempts to understand thinking and its conditions –​as well as its implications for moral action –​from a sociological perspective.

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Sociological Theories of Thinking and Reflexivity My focus here is on recent sociological theories that have attempted to address issues of mental activity, including thinking, in a social context. It is worth initially noting some broad features of this literature that have resonance with Arendt’s thinking. The first is the centrality of the concept of reflexivity, and the insistence that we are living in an age of “increasing” reflexivity. The idea, as this has been put forward by sociologists such as Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman and Margaret Archer, is that “high,” “second,” “advanced” or “liquid” modernity is marked by a generalized increase in people’s propensity to consider themselves relative to their social environment. Like Arendt, these theorists propose that personhood and self-​relation are socially mediated, the outcome of interactions with others, and not, as philosophers often understand the self, as a kind of monadic self-​creation. Second, in Archer’s case, there is an abiding interest in “internal conversation,” that is, how and what makes people think, together with an accompanying critique of sociological models that fail to take account of this. Third, there is a common concern with the kinds of pathologies that stem from the breakdown of reflexivity and/​or internal conversation. For Arendt, the phenomenon of non-​persons, or nobodies, is bound to her questions about the link between thinking and morality. For Archer and Beck, fractured or obsessive modes of reflexivity lead to pathologies of anxiety and lack of agency. These affinities suggest the possibility of some useful cross-​fertilization between Arendt’s work and sociological theories of mental activity. However, I  am here concerned with sketching only one area of common concern to which Arendt’s insights could provide valuable correction. This is that sociological theories tend to ignore the phenomenon of thinking, understood as the mental capacity that is primarily oriented to meaning, and that occupies a key position within Arendt’s tripartite model of mind. Although this criticism can only be sketched here, I argue that thinking is often either ignored by these theories, or is conflated with deliberation. This betrays the “action-​bias” of these theories, as well as suggesting something deficient about notions of thinking within both contemporary models of mind and within everyday life. For Giddens and Beck (1992; Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994), “high” or “second” modernity involves a radical departure from the institutionalized mode of modernity that preceded it. The relationship  –​including the perceived antagonisms –​between individuals and inherited structures and forms of culture is fundamentally altered. Whereas, under the conditions of “tradition” and “first modernity” individuals are confronted with a limited, inherited array of relatively unquestioned institutional possibilities governing the framework of their lives, in “second modernity,” increasingly, these possibilities are

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up for grabs by individuals themselves. Career trajectories, intimate relationships, spiritualities and identity (including such core elements of identity as gender) are increasingly susceptible to the effects of individual decision-​making. Archer dubs this the “extended reflexivity” thesis: “[I]‌n reflexive [or second] modernity, individuals have become ever more free of structure; in fact they have to redefine structure (or as Giddens puts it, tradition), meaning that much greater demands are placed upon personal reflexivity to ‘make a life of one’s own’ ” (Archer 2012, 3). Beck has summed up many of the social and individual changes that the discourse of reflexivity has brought about using the category of risk society (1992). Risk characterizes the subjective mode in which life is lived because decisions are increasingly subject to self-​monitoring and to consideration of their future consequences. This is why “life lived as risk” is in a certain sense the opposite of “life lived as fate.” The increasing obtrusion of future-​ consciousness into individual action adds an element of anxiety to this mode of self-​relating that reinforces the conviction that individualization and the growth of risk-​consciousness impose their own prices upon the resultant gains in agency and autonomy. It is, therefore, not surprising that anxiety has become, to some extent, the defining feature of how individuals in a risk society experience life. Anxiety is deeply bound up with time-​consciousness, especially toward the future. It is, as the existentialists, including Arendt, noted, connected to willing –​to projects, not objects –​and therefore to the future, not the present. Beck’s emphasis on the future-​orientation of risk-​consciousness, in other words, suggests that the mental activity that aligns most closely with this attitude is not thinking, but deliberation, which is the vehicle for willing –​ the “mental organ for the future” (1979, 2.15), as Arendt terms it. However, Beck’s conception of reflexivity is too elusive to function as the basis for a working sociological conception of mental activity. Margaret Archer’s work on reflexivity goes a long way to correcting the imprecision of this concept in sociological writing. In the process, she offers answers about mental activity that resonate much more closely with Arendt’s framework. Archer argues, in a series of influential books, that reflexivity involves a process of internal conversation, and that the form it takes is subject to wide variation. There are, she argues, three principal modes that are all present in “normal” individuals, but one of which is usually dominant. The three modes are communicative, autonomous and meta reflexivity, and Archer refines this typology through sophisticated empirical work that involves extensive interviews with different people about the mode of their internal conversations. Communicative reflexives typically follow a “thought and talk” pattern where they reflect on their private and socioeconomic situation by speaking with significant others, typically drawn from small intimate social

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circles. Autonomous reflexives tend to conceive of themselves primarily in terms of their socioeconomic position, and therefore their own relationship to the public sphere is dominant. They reflect on and make decisions primarily in these terms. They are therefore less bound to “contextual continuity” and “tradition” than communicative reflexives. Meta-​reflexives conceive of themselves in terms of the public sphere, but typically orient themselves to a “vocation” rather than “success,” as is the case with autonomous reflexives. Reflexivity for Archer, therefore, involves not simply self-​consciousness, but thinking about oneself relative to one’s social position. Archer also matches these modes of reflexivity to a sophisticated functional general theory of society, aligning communicative reflexivity with the need for reproduction and order, autonomous reflexivity with innovation and meta-​reflexivity with governance. But Archer also hypothesizes the existence of a fourth mode of reflexivity, that of “fractured” or “inhibited” reflexivity. Fractured reflexives have a limited conception of themselves in relation to their social milieu, and tend to have a correspondingly impoverished capacity for internal conversation. Their inability to “make their way in the world” aligns with their inability to conduct effective internal conversations, and there are important parallels here between “fractured reflexivity” and Arendt’s diagnosis of the incapacity to think. Archer’s model improves our understanding of mental activity by emphasizing the role of internal conversation as the means by which persons orient themselves to society. This orientation is, at the same time, a self-​constitutive process. But if Arendt’s conception of thinking fails to acknowledge the extent to which thinking is always entwined with other activities, Archer emphasizes only the ways in which internal conversation gets harnessed to worldly projects. Internal conversation is oriented, in her model, almost exclusively toward the understanding of oneself in relation to what to do. The focus on deliberation and the actions that flow from it are visible in the list of 10 distinct activities that she takes to largely comprise everyday mental activity: planning, rehearsing, mulling over, deciding, reliving, prioritizing, imagining, clarifying and budgeting. These should all be considered –​with the possible exception of imagining –​as preludes to acting, and seem to foreclose the possibility that a significant part of “normal” mental activity might be oriented to the kinds of meaning-​oriented self-​relation Arendt identifies with thinking. It is this orientation of thought to meaning that Arendt seeks to emphasize in distinguishing thinking from knowing, contemplating and deliberating. Meaning-​oriented thinking is not a spontaneous activity that takes place alone, but requires certain social conditions, in the form of public spaces in which individuals can constitute themselves vis-​à-​vis others, and take account of the human need for meaningful consideration of the ends of human life.

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Sociologists need to take thinking, understood in this way, as an irreducible, distinct, meaning-​oriented mental activity, seriously in the models of mind their theories imply, and Arendt provides some of the insights necessary to do this.

Conclusion Intuitively, we think that thinking is something we do when we are alone, and this leads critics like Sherry Turkle (2011) to point to the inhibitions on thinking generated by the relentless claims on our attention by the pace and technological enhancement of modern life. But this is only true superficially. Thinking, in the meaning-​generating sense in which Arendt understands it, requires situations in which people can constitute themselves as persons vis-​à-​ vis others. Arendt feared that such spaces were potentially less available in the modern world. She pointed to two examples of this. The first was the extreme case of totalitarianism, in which thinking was directly threatened, with the monopolization of all public spaces by a hegemonic ideology. But Arendt also feared that the decline of the public sphere within representative democracies endangered thinking by promoting a utilitarian ethic. A vision of internal conversation as oriented exclusively to action, of the enhancement of personal reflexivity that second modernity makes possible as oriented only to doing, risks reinforcing this ethic. Thinking instrumentalized to action is no longer thinking, but deliberation. Finally, thinking, contrary to Arendt’s own hypotheses, does not necessarily protect conscience, but it generates meaning, which is perhaps an essential component in being able to recognize right from wrong.

Notes 1 Arendt probably thought secularization was irreversible, but the Iranian Revolution of 1979 has demonstrated that is not necessarily so, and it has been argued that, with a global resurgence of religious faith, secularized societies have become more the exception than the norm (see Berger, 2014, x). 2 Arendt’s account of secularization is ambiguous. In some places, she seems to think it involves only the withdrawal of religion from public life, and its continuation within the private sphere. Elsewhere, she seems to tie it to a genuine transformation of beliefs. 3 Interstate violence was another matter. However, Arendt did not consider relations between states to be governed by moral codes, but by political considerations. 4 As Zygmunt Bauman (1989b) has argued, such positions perpetuate a misleading polarization between the idea that the Holocaust was a “normal” amplification of anti-​ Semitic violence as this had been occurring in Europe for centuries, and the idea that it constituted a “unique” upsurge of “barbarism.” The polarization, still widespread within the genocide literature, has been less than useful in coming to terms with the legacy of the Holocaust.

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5 Or at least the foundation for the dominant models. Norbert Wiley’s The Semiotic Self (1995) is perhaps the most successful elaboration of Mead’s original account. 6 Arendt remarked that The Life of the Mind was to be understood as a “companion volume” to The Human Condition. There are obvious parallels: Both books address human capacities, are at pains to stress the distinctiveness of these and their irreducibility of one another. Both employ a historical/​phenomenological approach, are thoroughly post-​metaphysical and imply far-​reaching criticisms of conventional approaches within the contemporary human sciences. 7 Descartes’ doubt of the reality of the world and Heidegger’s distinction between appearances and essences are cited as examples. But Arendt does not deny the authenticity of the experience, for “what is being transferred here is the experience of the thinking ego to things themselves. For nothing can be itself and at the same time for itself but the two-​in-​one” (1979, 1.185). 8 Arendt claims that “the only philosophers I know of who dared to doubt the existence of the faculty of thought were Nietzsche and Wittgenstein” (1979, 2.25). 9 Many of Arendt’s statements in Thinking recall sharp Kantian distinctions between, for example, understanding and reason and the (transcendental) ego as an “I think” and the “thinking ego.” This traps her in positions that are at odds with her anti-​metaphysical sensibilities elsewhere. 10 The book deals with its subject matter through almost exclusive reference to philosophers, although she insists in the Introduction that she is writing the history of a faculty, not of philosophers’ attempts to understand it. 11 Compare with the role of deliberation in Emirbayer and Mische’s widely influential account of agency (1998, 1002). 12 In The Human Condition, Arendt argues that the world of homo faber, the “society of producers” that valorizes utility, is likely to give way to that of the animal laborans, a “society of jobholders” that valorizes ease, and that she characterizes as “the deadliest, most sterile passivity history has ever known” (322). But Arendt gradually became less pessimistic about the human prospect over the following decade. This was connected with her emphasis on the concept of natality –​the unpredictability of the human condition, and the permanent possibility of the new. 13 In The Human Condition, Arendt argues that modern –​as opposed to ancient –​philosophy is motivated primarily by doubt, rather than wonder.

References Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2011. The Honour Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. New York: Norton. Archer, Margaret. 2003. Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —​—​—​. 2007. Making Our Way through the World:  Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —​—​—​. 2012 The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1963a. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Penguin. —​—​—​. (1966a) 2003. “Auschwitz on Trial.” In Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn, 227–​56. New York: Schocken Books.

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—​ —​ —​ . [1971b] 2003c. “Thinking and Moral Considerations.” In Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn, 159–​92. New York: Schocken Books. —​—​—​.1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 1993a. Between Past and Future, 91–​141. London, New York: Penguin. —​—​—​. 1994b. “On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding.” In Essays in Understanding:  1930–​1954, edited by Jerome Kohn, 328–​60. New  York:  Schocken Books. Previously unpublished manuscript originally composed in the early 1950s. —​—​—​. [1994c] 2003b. “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy.” In Responsibility and Judgment, 49–​146. New York: Schocken Books. —​—​—​. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 2003a. Responsibility and Judgment, edited with an introduction by Jerome Kohn, New York: Schocken Books. Baehr, Peter. 2010c. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989b. Modernity and the Holocaust. Oxford: Polity Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity. London: Sage. Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash. 1994. Reflexive Modernization:  Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Berger, Peter. 2014. The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age. Berlin: DeGruyter. Elster, Jon. 1999. Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Emirbayer, Mustafa and Ann Mische. 1998. What Is Agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4). Goldhagen, Daniel. 1996. Hitler’s Willing Executioners:  Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Alfred Knopf. Searle, John. 1998. Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World. New York: Basic Books. Smith, Christian. 2013. What Is a Person? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stangneth, Bettina. 2014. Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. New York: Alfred Knopf. Turkle, Sherry. 2011. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. New York: Basic Books. Varese, Frederico and Meir Yaish. 2000. The Importance of Being Asked: The Rescue of Jews in Nazi Europe. Rationality and Society 12(3). Wiley, Norbert. 1995. The Semiotic Self. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Chapter 7 EXPLAINING GENOCIDE: HANNAH ARENDT AND THE SOCIAL-​SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT OF DEHUMANIZATION Johannes Lang

A recent article in a psychology journal opens with a horrible scene, familiar from history: “two Nazi doctors calmly monitoring the vital signs of a Jewish prisoner soaking up to his neck in near-​freezing water” (Waytz and Epley 2012, 70). This, the authors tell us, is an example of dehumanization. The doctors fail to recognize their shared humanity with the prisoner: they fail to empathize with their victim, which leads them to disregard his suffering, which in turn enables them to treat him in ways they would otherwise have deemed morally abhorrent. The concept of dehumanization has assumed a prominent place in social-​ scientific thinking on genocide and mass atrocity. It has been called a “master category” in discussions of mass murder (Goldhagen 2009, 319) and “a chief premise in scholarly accounts of the Holocaust” – the “sine qua non” of such “large-​scale evil” (see Vetlesen 2005, 93). Many scholars see dehumanization as a necessary precondition for genocide. Sociologists portray the diminishment of the victims’ human status as a “prerequisite to their destruction” (Alvarez 1997, 168). “Without dehumanization,” historians argue, “the murderers could not have committed their crimes” (Blatman 2011, 424). The president of Genocide Watch has declared dehumanization one of eight universal “stages of genocide” (Stanton 1998) and psychologists confirm that “no mass atrocities in the contemporary world have occurred without some form of dehumanization” (Kressel 2002, 172). This current intellectual emphasis on dehumanization was greatly inspired by the encounter with the Nazi concentration camps. The camps’ imagery of dehumanization has become darkly iconic: the shaven heads and tattooed arms; the emaciated prisoners staggering about in the moments of liberation;

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the naked corpses bulldozed into mass graves. One of the British soldiers who liberated Bergen-​Belsen said about the perpetrators:  “The things they have committed, well, nobody would think they were human at all” (cited in Singer 2014). A psychologist arriving at the scene a few days after the end of the war in Europe reported that, “Any man visiting for the first time a concentration camp like Belsen would have difficulty in believing that human beings could suffer and fall so low in the scale that they no longer seemed to be ordinary men and women, but something subhuman” (Niremberski 1946, 65). When Primo Levi wrote about his experiences in Auschwitz, he challenged readers to consider if he and his fellow prisoners had remained fully human throughout their ordeal. Levi believed dehumanization lay at the core of Nazi atrocity. During an encounter with a specialist at one of Auschwitz’s research facilities, he sensed that the look the man gave him was not a look “between two men,” but rather a look “which came as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds” (1947, 105). Levi thought that if he could have adequately explained “the nature of that look,” he would have known how to explain “the essence of the great insanity of the third Germany” (1947, 105–​6). Hannah Arendt’s account of totalitarianism and Nazi genocide was essentially an attempt to explain that look. Confronted with the realities of the camps, Arendt confirmed what Primo Levi had suspected: that dehumanization indeed lay at the center of Nazi atrocity. “Perhaps what is behind it all,” she wrote to her friend and mentor, Karl Jaspers, in 1946, “is only that individual human beings did not kill other individual human beings for human reasons, but that an organized attempt was made to eradicate the concept of the human being” (Arendt and Jaspers 1992, 69). Under totalitarian rule, Arendt wrote, “Human nature as such is at stake” (Arendt 1951c, 459). She meant by this that the two great totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, led by Hitler and Stalin, had systematically assaulted the political, normative and existential conditions that make a distinctly human existence possible. Indeed, Arendt came to believe that the very “failure or success” of these totalitarian governments depended on their ability to destroy what was human in human beings. The human being, for Arendt as it was for Aristotle, is a social animal with a capacity for political existence. Totalitarian rule destroyed the public space necessary for political life. Furthermore, the human being is a concrete, unique individual, but totalitarian regimes sought to stamp out individuality. According to Arendt, this was because the human individual is a spontaneous and unpredictable creature, and totalitarian rule could not abide the thought of unpredictability. Individual uniqueness and unpredictability, Arendt pointed out, spring from critical thought and independent judgment,

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both of which totalitarian rule wished to extinguish. Finally, Arendt observed, the very concept of humanity involves a solidary notion of shared community and mutual obligation. The Nazis recoiled from this idea, retreating into a racist ideology of superior and inferior humanity. Totalitarian rule thus attacked all dimensions of the human condition, and it did so for inhuman reasons: in order to establish a singular ideological vision, unquestioned by alternative perspectives, and a singular will, unhampered by disagreement. Totalitarian regimes strove for absolute control in order to realize their utopian dreams. But the very idea that human beings can be totally controlled is an inhuman one. Arendt was not alone at the time in thinking that the Nazi regime had effectively crushed the individuality and agency of its henchmen. Philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, for example, claimed that the perpetrators had stopped seeing themselves as “self-​determined beings” and blindly merged into the national collective. This depersonalized self-​perception, he argued, gave rise to “the willingness to treat others as an amorphous mass” (1967, 26–​27). Adorno concluded that the perpetrators’ “inability to identify” with the victims was “unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred” (1967, 30). Levi, Arendt and Adorno shared the view that the Nazi executioners had dehumanized not only their victims but also themselves. The perpetrators had deprived themselves of their ability to relate to their victims, and this, Arendt claimed, had led them to lose touch with reality. Arendt’s basic point was that a realistic perception of reality has an ethical component: it requires a willingness to see the other, that is, to try to see like the other – to imagine the world from their perspective. Reality, in Arendt’s view, takes the form of a plurality of perspectives. To deny plurality and refuse to consider the perspectives of certain others is to create artificial reality: an ideological delusion. This was the essence of dehumanization in Arendt’s political theory: a distortion of reality that follows from the perpetrators’ refusal or inability to take the perspectives of their victims. Arendt wrote about Adolf Eichmann, chief organizer of transports to the death camps, that he displayed an “almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow’s point of view” (1963a, 47–​48). Only by acknowledging the perspectives of the victims could Eichmann have realized the full gravity of his actions; only in this way could the perpetrators have come to realize the unethical nature of their acts. Arendt offered her analysis in sharp opposition to the social sciences. For her, the epistemological implication of dehumanization was that the acts of the perpetrators and victims no longer made sense in terms of any familiar human motives. “We attempt to understand the behavior of concentration-​ camp inmates and SS-​men psychologically,” she complained, “when the very thing that must be realized is that the psyche can be destroyed even without the

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destruction of the physical man; that, indeed, psyche, character, and individuality seem under certain circumstances to express themselves only through the rapidity or slowness with which they disintegrate” (1951c, 441; emphasis in original). Arendt’s emphasis on the inhuman character of totalitarianism was a direct challenge to the social sciences and what she saw as their failure to acknowledge the unprecedented quality of Nazi atrocity – ​it was a rejection of the assumption that sociological and psychological, or even historical, inquiry could proceed with business as usual. Social scientists, as well as many historians, she argued, attempt to explain historical events on the assumption that such events make sense and are meaningful in terms of “behavior patterns and motives” associated with “human psychology.” But not all human actions are undertaken for human reasons, Arendt suggested; totalitarian rule had managed to “transcend” the “limitations” usually “thought to be inherent in the human condition” (1950b, 241). This particular history could not be understood in the usual terms of social science or historiography; it called for new methods and new concepts (see Baehr 2010c). As Primo Levi would later claim, Nazi hatred “is a hate that is not in us; it is outside man, it is a poison fruit sprung from the deadly trunk of Fascism, but it is outside and beyond Fascism itself. We cannot understand it, but we can and must understand from where it springs” (2001, 204). Arendt shared Levi’s belief that it was impossible to explain Nazi genocide in terms of rational human motives, but that it was imperative to identify its historical and intellectual sources. Arendt’s critique of the social sciences raises basic questions about the nature of explanation itself. What does it mean to explain a historical event? Does it mean identifying the various steps of a process, in order to tell a coherent story of cause and effect? Or does it mean identifying the fundamental conditions that made an event possible? Arendt was critical of the idea of history as a continuous process of cause and effect that historians and social scientists could trace. She imagined history as a series of contingent, unpredictable and sometimes wholly unexpected events (1961b). Metaphorically speaking, Arendt’s conception of history sounded less like physics and more like chemistry, where every historical event was a unique and specific mixture of various elements. In The Origins of Totalitarianism – which Arendt regretted not having called The Elements of Totalitarianism – this was the method: to identify the political, social and intellectual elements that had fused into totalitarianism. Arendt’s explanation took the form of political ontology: she did not aim to discover the steps in a causal sequence leading to genocide, but sought instead to identify the ontological conditions that had made those specific events possible in the first place. The elements of totalitarianism – imperialism, racism, anti-​Semitism – did not cause Nazism and the “Final Solution”; rather, they explained how these events could come about at all.

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For Arendt, dehumanization was one of the ontological conditions that enabled Nazi genocide. While she hardly ever used the term dehumanization herself, Arendt (1994b, 360)  later explicitly confirmed that dehumanization was implied in her account of totalitarianism. Nazi genocide, she argued, required that human beings, as human beings, first be rendered superfluous. But to render human beings superfluous is a process, and so Arendt could not escape an account of dehumanization as a process of increasing exclusion, humiliation and violence. This double meaning of genocidal dehumanization, as both ontological precondition and process, remains at the heart of the social-​scientific concept. This chapter evaluates the usefulness of dehumanization as a theoretical concept in explanations of genocide. One aim is to shed new light on Arendt’s relation to the social sciences by identifying the elements in her thought that reappear in sociological and social-​psychological theories of dehumanization. A second aim is to engage critically with these elements in Arendt’s thought, ideas that remain central to social-​scientific theories of genocidal dehumanization. This chapter addresses Arendt’s and the social sciences’ dual conception of dehumanization as both a process of violence and as an ontological precondition for genocide. We shall be concerned with three dimensions of this conception, namely, its assumptions, its effects and its persuasiveness.

Making Human Beings, as Human Beings, Superfluous: Hannah Arendt and the Elements of Dehumanization Arendt was convinced that the concentration camps provided the key to understanding the essence of totalitarianism. In her telling, the great totalitarians of the twentieth century were intensely paranoid regimes. Only when all conceivable sources of opposition had been eliminated would they feel secure, and this level of security could not be achieved until the system wholly controlled everyone. The system would not be complete – its power not absolute, its authority not secure – until it had obtained absolute control over everyone’s thoughts and behavior. Arendt imagined the concentration camps as a testing ground – a “laboratory” – for the practice of total domination. She suspected that what the totalitarians discovered there about the possibilities of power and the pliability of human beings was eventually meant to be applied in a society-​wide destruction of human individuality, spontaneity and critical thought. The first step in this process of dehumanization was to destroy what Arendt called the “juridical person in man” (1951c, 447). The Nazis accomplished this by “putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law,” by “placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by

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selecting its inmates outside the normal judicial procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty” (1951c, 447). The precondition of juridical destruction was the loss of citizenship. It was from this loss that everything followed. For instance, when the Nazis, in close collaboration with the Norwegian authorities, deported the Jews of Norway, they exempted Jews who were citizens of countries that had not signed deportation agreements with Nazi Germany. The Nazis also explicitly asked that the Norwegian Jews’ citizenships be revoked the moment these individuals left Norway (Michelet 2014). No longer protected by their citizenship, Jews could be arrested and deported beyond the bounds of legal protection and moral obligation. As Arendt put it, the victims were deprived of the very “right to have rights.” Citizens were transformed into what philosopher Giorgio Agamben (1998) has more recently called “bare life,” fully exposed and extremely vulnerable to the will of the sovereign. After having destroyed the victims’ “juridical person,” Nazi dehumanization targeted what Arendt termed their “moral person” (1951c, 454). According to Arendt, the separation of the concentration camps from the outside world facilitated the subversion of moral agency. She believed that human action becomes meaningful only when it is witnessed, recounted and remembered by others. Such remembrance affords the act an enduring significance that helps it transcend and outlast its own performance; it is what turns action into history. But the people who entered the camps were meant to disappear; their actions were supposed to leave no mark, to be wholly irrelevant, erased from memory, as if they had never existed at all. In the “phantom world” of the camps, Arendt claimed, sacrificing oneself in solidarity with others, or in order to set an example for others, became “senseless” and “empty” (1950b, 240). Yet even under such terrible circumstances many prisoners continued to act in accordance with their own moral conscience. Arendt realized that moral action allowed the inmates to retain a sense of moral integrity, a source of dignity and pride. For this reason, she suggested, the destruction of the moral person would not be complete until “the decisions of conscience” could themselves be made to seem “absolutely questionable and equivocal” (1951c, 452). Arendt argued that such a destabilization of conscience was achieved in the camps when moral dilemmas were rendered irresolvable in moral terms. Behind the barbed wire the choice was “no longer between good and evil,” she claimed, but often “between murder and murder” (1951c, 452). How, then, were the inmates supposed to choose? “Who could solve the moral dilemma of the Greek mother,” for instance, “who was allowed by the Nazis to choose which of her three children should be killed?” (1951c, 452). Without the normative precepts of a conscience to guide human action, “the moral person in man” was finally undermined.

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But not even the destruction of moral agency was enough to satisfy the totalitarians, according to Arendt. After the destruction of the “juridical” and “moral” person, the individual’s unique identity – shaped by biology, will and past experience – survived. This is to say that after political exclusion and utter moral degradation, the human being remained human. Only when the individual’s will and personal identity had been completely eliminated would totalitarian rule have achieved its goal: the transformation of unique human beings into interchangeable members of the mass. “The methods of dealing with this uniqueness of the human person are numerous,” wrote Arendt (1951c, 453); in the Nazi case, it began “with the monstrous conditions in the transports to the camps, when hundreds of human beings [were] packed into a cattle-​car”; it continued “upon arrival at the camp, the well-​organized shock of the first hours, the shaving of the head, the grotesque camp clothing”; and it ended “in the utterly unimaginable tortures so gauged as not to kill the body, at any event not quickly,” but aimed at manipulating the “body – with its infinite possibilities of suffering – in such a way as to make it destroy the human person” (1951c, 453). The spontaneous, unpredictable and unique individual who had entered the camp was thereby reduced to what Arendt, drawing on ancient terminology, called the animal laborans: the animal that labors solely to remain alive. Ultimately, Arendt claimed, also the animal in the human was destroyed, as the camps eventually transformed the “human personality” into “something that even animals are not” (1951c, 438). Animals live in accordance with their needs: they eat when they are hungry and sleep when they are tired. Concentration camp prisoners, by contrast, were denied the right to respond to their most elemental needs. In the Nazi camps, Arendt asserted, the inmates came to resemble Pavlov’s dog:  that “perverted animal,” which was conditioned to salivate not when it was hungry, but when it heard the sound of a bell. The “human person,” who, in Arendt’s view, is always “somehow” a “specific mixture of spontaneity and being conditioned,” had been “transformed into a completely conditioned being” (1950b, 240). Nazi violence revealed to Arendt that human status is neither a natural nor a God-​given right, but a political achievement that can be effectively dismantled. The “right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity” (1951c, 298), was not guaranteed by the humanity of the individual itself. Even the perpetrators’ perception of the victims’ human appearance could be undermined, Arendt concluded, through the physical and psychological torment of the victims that occurred in the camps. Extreme degradation of the prisoners enabled the perpetrators to effectively suppress the “normal knowledge” that these people were actual human beings with some claim to humane treatment, making their murder “as impersonal as the squashing of a gnat” (1951c, 443).

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Many of Arendt’s claims about totalitarianism and total domination remain highly controversial. Historians have criticized and revised her portrayal of Nazi Germany as a regime of absolute terror and total control. Claudia Koonz has pointed out that, “Although the Third Reich had characteristics of totalitarian regimes, it also bore the marks of a collapsed democracy. Germans were accustomed to participating in a lively public culture. Nazi takeover did not mean the destruction of that culture so much as its re-​formation. A deadly uniformity did not descend on Germany when Hitler became chancellor” (2003, 13). Yet Arendt’s central idea  –​that terror and ideology succeeded in radically distorting the perpetrators’ perception of reality – survives and resounds through later social-​scientific work on genocide and mass atrocity. Arendt’s suggestion that dehumanization blinds perpetrators of genocide to the moral and human realities of their actions is widely accepted today. Her claim that dehumanization renders the killing impersonal and unemotional is often taken as a fundamental truth about the psychology of genocide. Likewise, Arendt’s conception of dehumanization as a sociological and psychological process of exclusion and deindividuation prefigures and informs much social-​scientific thinking on genocide, as does her tendency to treat dehumanization as an ontological precondition for genocide. In the years since Arendt presented her analysis, the concept of dehumanization has travelled across the humanities and social sciences, acquiring various meanings along the way. This chapter shall limit itself to the sociological and social-​psychological use of the concept. In the sociological imagination, dehumanization is conceptualized as a series of acts or a set of practices that strip the victims of their legal rights and define them as unworthy of moral concern. Dehumanization is also a form of discourse, where one group of people begins to describe another group in nonhuman, subhuman or inhuman terms. On the social-​psychological level, dehumanization is portrayed as a cognitive mechanism of moral and emotional disengagement, which creates a much-​needed detachment that enables perpetrators to endure the experience of killing (e.g., Bandura 1999).

Overcoming Moral Restraints: Hannah Arendt and the Sociology of Dehumanization Arendt noticed how the Nazis “instinctively felt that the idea of humanity, whether it appears in a religious or humanistic form, implies the obligation of a general responsibility,” which they did “not wish to assume” (1945a, 131). The perpetrators “recoiled more and more from the idea of humanity,” she wrote, and became “more susceptible to the doctrine of race, which denies the

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very possibility of a common humanity” (1945a, 131). Racial thinking allowed the Nazis to shed the normative constraints traditionally associated with the principle of humanity; racism’s hierarchical conception of humanity justified severe inequality and mass murder. Sociologist Rowan Savage (2013) has recently argued that such a rejection of shared humanity is a necessary (but not sufficient) aspect of genocide. His argument rests on two central claims. One:  in modern societies, the use of violence needs to be seen as legitimate – as justified. Two: in modern societies, the purposeful mass destruction of civilians is not perceived as legitimate. In other words, with modernity comes a powerful and widespread norm against intentionally harming large numbers of unarmed civilians, and so a modern state that wishes to pursue a policy of genocide must find a way to circumvent this norm. Savage implies that only dehumanization can accomplish this task. He endorses a view similar to the one expressed by Herbert Kelman and Lee Hamilton, who have argued that “inhibitions against murdering one’s fellow human beings are generally so strong that victims must also be stripped of their human status if they are to be subjected to systematic killing” (Kelman and Hamilton 1989, 19). According to Savage, dehumanization is the mechanism “that allows genocide to occur” (2013, 147; emphasis in original); it “legitimizes killing that would otherwise be unacceptable” (2013, 151). Dehumanization achieves this effect, Savage argues, by defining the victims as being “outside the bounds of humanity and of human moral obligation” (2013, 155). This is what Arendt describes as the destruction of the juridical person. According to sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, such an act of exclusion places the victims beyond “the outer limits of the social territory inside which moral questions may be asked at all with any sense” (1989a, 27). Outside these normative boundaries, Bauman claimed, “moral precepts do not bind, and moral evaluations are meaningless” (1989a, 27). In this view, defining the victims as unworthy of moral consideration completely “quashes the moral significance of the act and thereby pre-​empts all conflict” between the perpetrators’ violent actions and their personal moral standards (1989a, 25). The moral standards simply do not apply; they are irrelevant to the task at hand. Bauman concluded that the very “humanity” of the victims becomes “invisible” (1989a, 27). Perhaps we are hereby getting closer to an understanding of the look Primo Levi received from the scientist in Auschwitz? The sociological account of genocidal dehumanization, so similar to Arendt’s description of the Nazis’ destruction of the victim’s juridical person, is compelling and has been widely embraced within Holocaust and genocide studies. But it is worth remembering that Arendt did not equate the destruction of the juridical person with total domination or dehumanization. The moral and physical

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exclusion of the victims was an important step – but only a first step – in a process that would eventually end in the dehumanization of both perpetrators and victims. For Arendt, the phenomenon of dehumanization was much more than a sociopolitical refusal to grant victims their right to have rights. For her, dehumanization, as a phenomenon, had moral as well as existential and subjective dimensions. Recall that, in Arendt’s account, Nazi genocide involved not only the moral exclusion of the victims, but also the destruction of the ontological conditions that make a distinctly human existence possible. Fusing the language of Arendt’s account with the terminology of social science, we may say that the destruction of the juridical person is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for dehumanization. For something to be dehumanization, in the full meaning of the word, it has to be more than moral exclusion. We have seen how Arendt’s account of total domination supports a dual conception of dehumanization as both a process and as an end result of that process. This double meaning of dehumanization confronts us with the question of what it means to explain genocide – or, for that matter, what it means to explain dehumanization. When sociological theories portray dehumanization as a precondition for genocide, or as a necessary first step in the process of mass murder, they treat dehumanization as a cause of genocide, rather than as its effect. Arendt’s account is more complex, in this regard, and more phenomenological:  it aims to unpack the phenomenon of dehumanization itself, not simply use it as a heuristic device in a causal narrative. For Arendt, dehumanization is not just a process of exclusion, not just a step in the process of mass murder – but also, and more fundamentally, a transformation of the human condition itself; a transformation that becomes possible as a result of the violence. A sociological account that equates genocidal dehumanization with moral exclusion ignores Arendt’s conceptual distinction between the moral and existential dimensions of dehumanization. Such a sociological approach assumes that there is no important difference between public discourse and individual subjectivity, or between social reality and individual judgment. Arendt’s starting point is that there is such a difference, and that we need to insist on the individual’s ability to actively question the validity and value of received truths. Following Kant, Arendt thought that the hallmark of Enlightenment consists precisely in such a refusal to passively accept social reality and in the attempt to critically examine the conditions and desirability of that reality (Arendt 1982). It is this belief in the individual’s capacity for critical judgment that enabled Arendt to insist on a meaningful – and indeed crucial – distinction between the destruction of the juridical person, on one hand, and the destruction of the moral and individual person, on the other. If we take this distinction seriously, then dehumanization – in the sense that it destroys the conditions for

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a distinctly human existence – must not only take the sociological, but also the existential and subjective aspects of the phenomenon into account. If we wish to understand the phenomenology of dehumanization, as opposed to using it as a variable in a causal explanation, we need to try to comprehend how dehumanization works, both as a mode of subjective experience and as an ontological condition for an inhuman existence. This returns us, once more, to Arendt’s step-​by-​step account of dehumanization, which begs the question: Why would it not be enough to destroy the juridical person in the victim? Why go to such great lengths to destroy also the victim’s moral personality and spontaneity? For Arendt, the answer was partly that this extreme degradation was necessary in order to transform the victims into creatures with whom the perpetrators could no longer identify, thereby making murder seem impersonal. This is similar to what social psychologists argue today. Human beings, we are told, come equipped with empathic capacities that are easily activated in encounters with other human beings (Epley 2014). As a result, the perpetrator’s concrete encounter with an individual victim could challenge abstract claims about the subhuman, inhuman or nonhuman nature of the victim. The recognition of the victim’s individuality and humanity, social psychologists claim, would in turn provoke a compassionate response to his or her suffering. Arendt (1963f, 86)  wrote that compassion “abolishes the distance” between human beings. So if the sociological function of a dehumanizing discourse is to eliminate moral obligations toward the victims, the social-​psychological function of dehumanization is supposedly to undermine the capacity to feel compassion with the people about to be killed.

Overcoming Empathy: Hannah Arendt and the Social Psychology of Dehumanization The capacity to feel compassion has often been seen as fundamental to the human condition. In classical Latin, the meaning of the word humanus was associated with “benevolent” (Giustiniani 1985, 168), and the great Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero used the term humanitas to “designate a kind of responsiveness to others that prominently included the ability to imagine their experiences” (see Nussbaum 2010, xviii). Similarly, during the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, influential thinkers like David Hume and Adam Smith argued that an emotional responsiveness to others – what they called “sympathy” – should be seen as the defining “sentiment of humanity” (see Moyn 2006). In their view, to be human was to be humane. If you wanted to meet the standard of humanity, you had to be compassionate. Historian Samuel Moyn has described how this conception of compassionate humanity inaugurated a “new moral universe,”

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a “sentimental humanitarianism” (2006, 402); in the words of Joyce Chaplin, many Europeans came “to believe that they should feel a sympathy for all other humans, even those outside one’s family or community” (1990, 301). According to Moyn, such sentimental humanitarianism remains “the moral horizon of modern times” (2006, 402). It is the moral horizon within which theories of genocidal dehumanization operate. These theories implicitly rely on normative standards of humanity and consider certain attitudes and behaviors inhuman. As we have seen, sociological theories of genocidal dehumanization presuppose that social and political recognition of a group’s humanity comes with a set of moral obligations, including the obligation to feel sympathy with their suffering. Similarly, social-​psychological theories of dehumanization suggest that perpetrators’ ability to empathize with other human beings and perceive their suffering would normally provoke sympathy or compassion. Just like Hume and Smith, theories of genocidal dehumanization imply that to be human is to be humane, capable of sympathy or compassion. Historically, the feeling of sympathy has been closely connected to a capacity for empathy, and often the distinction between the two phenomena has been blurred (Wispé 1986). Yet the conceptual distinction between empathy and sympathy is important. Where sympathy involves both emotional sensitivity to the suffering of others and an active sense that something has to be done to alleviate this suffering, empathy is the attempt to take the perspective of another. Contemporary psychological science defines empathy as the ability to understand the minds of others –​an ability that can be triggered either by people’s physical senses or by their cognitive inferences (see Epley 2014). The physiological route to empathy takes the form of imitation: one person reads fear on the face of another and feels a surge of fear. In this mode, empathy is a type of emotional contagion, brought about by a person’s intense identification with another’s experience; empathy immerses one individual in the emotions of another and momentarily blurs the distinction between self and other. The second route to empathy is more intellectual and less affective. In this mode, empathy is not the imitation of another person’s experience, but rather the attempt to infer people’s subjective experiences from their context and behavior. Someone sees another person blush and infers from this that the other feels ashamed, angry or embarrassed, depending on the situation. Social-​psychological theories of genocidal dehumanization assume that both forms of empathy require identification: a perception of similarity. Albert Bandura (1999, 200) argues that dehumanization is “an essential ingredient in the perpetration of inhumanities” because it transforms the victims into creatures with whom the perpetrators can no longer identify. Jacques Semelin writes that dehumanization, humiliation and excessive violence serve to “ward off any risk of identification,” thereby “curbing any real empathy between

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executioner and victim” (2003, 207). If the perpetrators had perceived their victims “in terms of common humanity,” claims Bandura, this perceived similarity would have activated “empathetic emotional reactions” and “a sense of social obligation” (1999, 200). In other words, social-​psychological theories of dehumanization argue that a perception of similarity triggers identification; that identification activates empathy; that empathy gives rise to compassionate emotional reactions (e.g., sympathy); and that these emotional reactions inspire a sense of social and moral obligation. Dehumanization is said to attack the root cause of compassion and moral obligation, namely, the sense of similarity. If there is no perception of similarity between victims and perpetrators, there can be no identification; if there is no identification, there can be no empathy; if there is no empathy, there can be no sympathy or sense of community and moral obligation. The social-​psychological argument for dehumanization depends on this causal sequence from identification to empathy to compassion. However, none of these causal connections should be taken for granted.

A Critique of Empathy: Hannah Arendt and the Impersonal Imagination To begin with, it seems problematic to assume that empathy requires identification or a perception of similarity. “In empathy,” writes philosopher Dan Zahavi, “the experience you empathically understand remains that of the other. The focus is on the other, and not on yourself, not on how it would be like for you to be in the shoes of the other. That is, the distance between self and other is preserved and upheld” (2010, 291). The attempt to understand another is not inherently an attempt to identify with that other. This point might be further clarified with reference to novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s distinction between “good” and “bad” readers. According to Nabokov, there are at least two varieties of imagination. First, there is the “comparatively lowly kind which turns for support to the simple emotions and is of a definitely personal nature” (1980, 4). The reader who employs this kind of imagination is affected by a situation in a book because it reminds him of something that happened to him or to someone he knows. Such a reader treasures a book because it “nostalgically recalls” a “part of his own past” or because “he identifies himself ” with one or more characters in the book (1980, 4). Nabokov declared that this “is the worst thing a reader can do” (1980, 4). In his opinion, only an inferior kind of imagination has to go via the reader’s self and base empathy on identification. The “authentic instrument” of reading, by contrast, is what Nabokov called the “impersonal imagination.” The good reader, Nabokov wrote, “must know

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when and where to curb his imagination and this he does by trying to get clear the specific world the author places at his disposal” (1980, 4). Such readers encounter literature by attempting to strike a “harmonious balance” between their own mind and that of the author, so that the book, in all its familiarity and unfamiliarity, may speak to them. A similar idea is available in Arendt’s posthumously published Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Here Arendt elaborated on the Kantian idea of “enlarging” one’s own mind “so as to take into account the thoughts of others” (1982, 42). Such an enlargement of the mind, Arendt argued, was a precondition for critical thought. “Critical thinking is possible,” she wrote, “only where the standpoints of all others are open to inspection,” and the mental “faculty that makes this possible is called imagination” (1982, 43). “To think with an enlarged mentality” was to encourage “one’s imagination to go visiting” (1982, 43). For Arendt, this enlarged mentality did not consist in an empathic capacity to “know what actually goes on” in the minds of others (1982, 43), but rather in an ability or willingness to imagine their possible perspectives. This form of imagination is quite the opposite of identification; it requires instead an ability to transcend the limitations of one’s own perspective and one’s own self-​interest in order to put oneself in the place of another. Ideally, Arendt argued, it is an “impartial” imagination – reminiscent of what Nabokov described as the ability “to remain a little aloof ” (1980, 4). The implication of Nabokov’s and Arendt’s notion of an impersonal or impartial imagination is that there are at least two varieties of empathy: one that requires identification and one that does not. Theories of genocidal dehumanization acknowledge only the first kind of imagination: they assume that people are what might be called “bad” empathizers, able to empathize with people only to the extent they can identify with them. This ignores the kind of empathic imagination that does not require identification and that does not blur the distinction between self and other. As a result, theories of dehumanization fail to see that perpetrators may be perfectly capable of imagining their victims’ experiences without identifying with them; these theories fail to acknowledge that empathy is an effortful feat of imagination, not only an emotional or quasi-​instinctual impulse to be suppressed. In its more physiological form, empathy may resemble what Arendt described as “the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering” (1963a, 106) – a form of physical revulsion in the face of violence. But the realities in the Nazi camps revealed that empathy need not have this emotional effect. In the camps, an empathic ability to second-​guess the motives of the prisoners became a weapon – a source of power – in the hands of the guards, increasing their ability to manipulate and torment the victims (see Lang 2010). The very system of mass murder in the camps, which was designed

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to deceive the victims, reflected the genocidal organizers’ empathic ability to imagine the world from the perspective of their victims. Theories of genocidal dehumanization prevent us from seeing this darker side of human psychology. These theories make it difficult to imagine that some groups of human beings might intentionally wish to harm other groups of human beings. Where Arendt and Levi situated totalitarianism and Nazi ideology outside and in opposition to the human condition, theories of genocidal dehumanization suggest that human beings are socially and psychologically predisposed to oppose such violence, and so their resistance and hesitation must be overcome. An emphasis on the importance of dehumanization obscures the fact that perpetrators may recognize the individuality and subjective suffering of their victims without feeling the slightest shred of compassion. The Nazi perpetrators subscribed to an ethic of toughness. To the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, “human emotions seemed almost like treason against the Führer” (1947, 163). When his men approached him – as they often did – and “poured out their depression and anxieties,” asking, “Is it necessary that hundreds of thousands of women and children have to be annihilated?” Höss reassured them. He, who “countless times,” according to himself, “had asked the same question, had to put them off by reminding them that it was Hitler’s order,” and “that it was necessary to destroy all the Jews in order to forever free Germany and the future generations from our toughest enemy” (1947, 161). Höss considered the Jews and other “asocial elements” enemies of the state. He claimed personally not to hate the Jews, yet he shared the view that the Jewish people were a ruthless and dangerous opponent. But apparently the commandant was also curious about the experiences of his victims. Höss wrote that he “often wondered what they were thinking” (1947, 129), and that it “was not without inner sympathy” that he “faced all of the occurrences in the camp” (1947, 95). On one occasion, when ordering a subordinate to carry two Jewish children kicking and screaming into the gas chamber, Höss claimed to have “felt like shrinking into the ground out of pity” (1947, 162). But he had to be ruthless. Höss’ memoirs expose the limits of his empathy. For instance, while he claimed to have studied the Jews “closely,” Höss concluded that the “way the Jews lived and died was a puzzle” he “could not solve” (1947, 161). Höss explained the desperate and sometimes selfish behavior of the victims with reference to their Jewishness, rather than seeing it as a direct result of their desperate struggle for survival. The commandant of Auschwitz apparently accepted the ideological claim that these people were subhuman. When his brother-​in-​law asked him what the term Untermensch meant, “Höss sighed. ‘You always ask and ask.’ … ‘Look, you can see for yourself. They are not like

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you and me. They are different. They look different. They do not behave like human beings. They have numbers on their arms. They are here in order to die’ ” (cited in Segev 1987, 213–​14). Höss’ recollections and reflections, recorded in the immediate aftermath of the war, show the usefulness of dehumanization as a tool of ideological justification, psychological rationalization and emotional suppression. Yet Höss’ account also reveals how his own experience repeatedly offset the abstract claim about the subhuman character of the Jews. Ideology could not fully shield the commandant from the human tragedy unfolding day and night, right in front of his eyes. Höss and his subordinates frequently had to ward off sudden moments of identification with their victims. “Many a night as I stood out there on the railroad platforms, at the gas chambers, or at the burnings,” Höss recalled, “I was forced to think of my wife and children” while trying hard to avoid “connecting them to what was taking place” (1947, 163). He remembered how the “married men who worked the crematory or the open-​ pit burnings often told [him] that the same thoughts had occurred to them. When they watched the women enter the gas chambers with their children, their thoughts naturally turned to their own families” (1947, 163). This tendency to associate the victims with the perpetrator’s own family was not unique to the SS at Auschwitz. Historian Christopher Browning (1998) has described how members of a killing unit in Eastern Europe would try to excuse themselves from murder operations by arguing that they were fathers with children who found it repugnant to murder women and children. It is well known that the shift in methods during the Holocaust, from mass shooting to gassing, was partly a response to the fact that many of the members of the Einsatzgruppen – the specialized killing units in the East –​were severely affected by their task of massacring unarmed men, women and children. The head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, was told that the mass shootings were producing either neurotics or brutes (Rhodes 2002). The trauma of killing defenseless human beings became a serious operational problem.

Conclusion: Empathy and Explanation The preceding discussion of the perpetrators’ psychology once again confronts us with what it means to explain genocide. How is the question of empathy – the perpetrators’ empathy as well as our own – relevant to the intellectual project of explanation? Browning concluded that a “degree of empathy” with the perpetrators was “inherent” in trying to “understand them” (1998, xx). Empathy, Browning argued, enables the historian or social scientist to see the world from the perpetrators’ perspective, and it is only through such perspective-​taking that we

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can hope to explain what happened. Browning believed that the method of empathy relies on a limited form of identification with the perpetrators. “I must recognize,” he wrote, “that in the same situation, I  could have been either a killer or an evader – both were human” (1998, xx). The absence of empathy and identification, Browning claimed, would render any adequate history of the perpetrators impossible. Browning’s historiographical use of empathy presupposed that we share a common rationality with the perpetrators. He insisted that the killers were not “utterly different from us”; they were “shaped by a culture that had its own peculiarities but was nonetheless within the mainstream of western, Christian, and Enlightenment traditions” (1998, 222). Browning’s historical claim, contra Arendt, was that the perpetrators shared many of the moral convictions and norms that we recognize as our own. The epistemological risk inherent in Arendt’s emphasis on total domination and dehumanization was that it preempted any empathic identification with the perpetrators. In contrast to Browning, Arendt rejected the idea that we share a universal human rationality with the perpetrators. Where Browning and many social scientists use the concept of dehumanization to blur the distinction between “us” and “them” in an attempt to explain how people “like us” could become killers like them, Arendt’s notion of dehumanization served to distance herself and her readers from the Nazi perpetrators. The killers were “beyond the pale even of solidarity in human sinfulness” (1951c, 459). As Primo Levi would later put it, “no normal human being will ever be able to identify with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, and endless others” (2001, 204). But should such a view lead us to abandon empathy as a method of interpretation? Does the usefulness of empathy, as a mode of understanding, really depend on our ability to identify with the perpetrators? The conceptual distinction between empathy and identification, which this chapter has insisted on, implies that the answer is no. In fact, this distinction highlights how self-​centered identification might actually stand in the way of empathic imagination. The most important thing the hermeneutic method of empathy asks of us is that we try to image the world from the perspective of the historical actors, rather than from our own point of view. We must try to embody Nabokov’s “good reader” and employ an impersonal imagination in our attempts to understand the actions and intentions of others. Arguably, this is what Arendt sought to do in her analysis of the Nazi perpetrators: she tried to imagine their perspective without identifying with them as fellow human beings. This method, however, came with potential pitfalls of its own. What was ultimately at stake in Arendt’s account of dehumanization was nothing less than reality itself. Arendt understood this. As we have seen, she pointed out that reality is intersubjective –​that a realistic perception of reality

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depends on individuals’ willingness and ability to take into account the perspectives of others and establish a shared understanding of the world. Such an intersubjective perception of reality requires a well-​functioning public sphere. Totalitarian terror was so effective, in Arendt’s view, because it destroyed the public sphere; it dissuaded people from acting and speaking freely, which prevented them from producing a diversity of publicly available perspectives and opinions. This elimination of public discourse made it difficult for people to obtain a realistic grasp of the world, since an adequate perception of reality requires that others be allowed to confirm, challenge or correct it. Totalitarian regimes replaced what Arendt called a genuinely common sense with what she derided as an ideological “super-​sense” (or “non-​sense”); these regimes encouraged people to stop trusting that things were as they seemed and to begin to look beyond and behind the world of appearances in search of the real truth. As a consequence, ideological conspiracy theories became “emancipated from the reality that we perceive with our five senses” (1951c, 470), because direct experience of reality could no longer correct those theories, since that experience was itself deemed false. Arendt’s account of totalitarianism culminated in the claim that terror had ruined “all relationships between men,” while ideological thinking had ruined men’s “relationships with reality” (1951c, 474). Blinded by ideology, Nazi executioners could no longer see that the victims standing before them were innocent human beings. They might appear innocent, but this appearance of innocence was not to be trusted –​for it concealed the reality of a very dangerous enemy. Theories of dehumanization echo Arendt’s claim that the perpetrators have lost their trust in appearances: the victims may look human, but in reality they are not. Dehumanization brings about the collapse of intersubjectivity –​ the collapse of a shared social reality –​between perpetrators and victims. As a result, the perpetrators seem to lose touch with reality. Social psychologists John Sabini and Maury Silver, for instance, write that the concentration camp guards were “shielded from the facts of their treatment of these human beings they were now forced to see, smell, hear, and on occasion even touch” because “for the Nazis these were not, after all, fully human beings; they were a subhuman species” (1993, 206). The executioners simply did not recognize the full gravity of their actions. This kind of argument renders the perpetrators delusional. Arendt’s description of the Nazis as both emotionally and perceptually impaired individuals greatly contributed to such a pathologizing portrayal of the killers. In a nightmarish world of complete terror and ideological indoctrination, these people lost their hold on reality and finally also their humanity. Gone was the perpetrators’ compassion, their capacity for sound moral judgment, their ability to think beyond the intellectual constraints of ideology; gone was their

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unpredictable spontaneity and their individuality. These people had ceased to see themselves as actors; they had relinquished their own will and become thoughtless agents of a totalitarian regime. Ironically, the effect of this argument was to dehumanize the perpetrators themselves. Arendt’s sociological horror story deprived the Nazi executioners of a proper psychology:  their thoughts and experiences were mere reflections of ideology. But this was not the end of the story. Or, as Arendt might have put it, this was only the end of one story. For “there remains also the truth,” she concluded, “that every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning” (1951c, 478). The ability to begin something new, Arendt asserted, “is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identical with man’s freedom” (1951c, 479). The very last sentence of The Origins of Totalitarianism famously reads: “This beginning is guaranteed by each new birth; it is indeed every man” (1951c, 479). At the last moment, Arendt provided herself – and us – with an emergency exit from the nightmarish vision of inhumanity her account of totalitarianism had created. While Arendt seemed to believe that the totalitarians of the twentieth century had come close to utterly destroying human individuality and spontaneity, she also emphasized that totalitarianism was a thoroughly artificial system that constantly came into conflict with the human condition and therefore perpetually faced the possibility of its own demise. The totalitarians were right to be paranoid, Arendt implied, for if totalitarianism was hostile to the human condition, the human condition was equally hostile to totalitarianism. The hubristic totalitarian belief that “everything is possible,” she noted, had “proven only that everything can be destroyed” (1951c, 459). Human nature is neither completely malleable nor utterly controllable, and totalitarian regimes must continually contend with people’s ability to act in spontaneous and unpredictable ways. The claims of ideology are never safe from individuals’ capacity to think for themselves and make up their own minds. The attempt to dehumanize the individual by crushing its ability to think, judge and act is always potentially threatened by those very same capacities. Human imagination, empathy and critical thought continually threaten to expose the lie of dehumanization. Actual experience again and again undermines ideological abstractions. In the fictitious memoirs of an SS officer, novelist Jonathan Littell writes that, no matter how “brutalized and habituated” the perpetrators may have become, their alcoholism, nervous breakdowns, suicides and sadness all “demonstrated that the other exists, exists as an other, as a human, and that no will, no ideology, no amount of stupidity or alcohol can break this bond, tenuous but indestructible” (2009, 147; emphasis in original). If Littell is right, then this confronts us with the fact that human beings have proven all too willing and able to kill other human beings without averting

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their gaze. The perpetrators knew what they were doing. If nothing else, this gives us reason to hold them accountable for the suffering and destruction they knowingly inflicted.

References Adorno, Theodor W. (1967) 2003. “Education after Auschwitz.” In Can One Live after Auschwitz? A  Philosophical Reader, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, 19–​33. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Alvarez, Alexander. 1997. “Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust.” Social Science History 21(2): 139–​78. Arendt, Hannah. (1945a) 1994. “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility.” In Essays in Understanding:  1930–​1954, edited by Jerome Kohn, 121–​32. New  York:  Schocken Books. Originally published in Jewish Frontier 12, 1945, as “German Guilt.” —​ —​ —​ . (1950b) 1994. “Social Science Techniques and the Study of Concentration Camps.” In Essays in Understanding:  1930–​1954, edited by Jerome Kohn, 232–​ 47. New York: Schocken Books. Originally published in Jewish Social Studies 12(1), 1950. —​—​—​. (1951c) 1967. The Origins of Totalitarianism (3rd ed.). New York: Harcourt. —​—​—​. 1961b. Between Past and Future. New York: Viking Press. —​—​—​. 1963a. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Penguin. —​—​—​. 1963f. On Revolution. London: Penguin. —​—​—​. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Ronald Beiner. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 1994b. “On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding.” In Essays in Understanding:  1930–​1954, edited by Jerome Kohn, 328–​60. New  York:  Schocken Books. Previously unpublished manuscript originally composed in the early 1950s. Arendt, Hannah and Karl Jaspers. 1992. Correspondence, 1926–​1969, edited by Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. Baehr, Peter. 2010c. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bandura, Albert. 1999. “Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 3(3): 193–​209. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989a. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Blatman, Daniel. 2011. The Death Marches:  The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Browning, Christopher. 1998. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Perennial. Chaplin, Joyce E. 1990. “Slavery and the Principle of Humanity: A Modern Idea in the Early Lower South.” Journal of Social History 24(2): 299–​315. Epley, Nicholas. 2014. Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel and Want. London: Allen Lane. Giustiniani, Vito R. 1985. “Homo, Humanus, and the Meanings of ‘Humanism.’” Journal of the History of Ideas 46(2): 167–​95. Goldhagen, Daniel J. 2009. Worse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. New York: Public Affairs.

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Höss, Rudolf. (1947) 1992. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, edited by Steven Paskuly. New York: Da Capo Press. Memoirs originally composed in 1946–​47. Kelman, Herbert C. and V. Lee Hamilton. 1989. Crimes of Obedience. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Koonz, Claudia. 2003. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kressel, Neil. 2002. Mass Hate: The Global Rise of Genocide and Terror. New York: Westview Press. Lang, Johannes. 2010. “Questioning Dehumanization:  Intersubjective Dimensions of Violence in the Nazi Concentration and Death Camps.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 24(2): 225–​46. Levi, Primo. (1947) 1996. Survival in Auschwitz:  The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New  York: Touchstone. Originally published in English under the title If This Is a Man. —​—​—​. 2001. The Voice of Memory: Interviews, 1961–​1987, edited by Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon. New York: The New Press. Littell, Jonathan. 2009. The Kindly Ones. New York: Harper. Michelet, Marte. 2014. Den største forbrytelsen: Ofre og gjerningsmenn i det norske Holocaust [The Greatest Crime: Victims and Perpetrators in the Norwegian Holocaust]. Oslo: Gyldendal. Moyn, Samuel. 2006. “Empathy in History, Empathizing with Humanity.” History and Theory 45(3): 397–​415. Nabokov, Vladimir. 1980. Lectures on Literature. New York: Harcourt. Niremberski, M. 1946. “Psychological Investigation of a Group of Internees at Belsen Camp.” Journal of Mental Science 92(1): 60–​74. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2010. From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law. New York: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, Richard. 2002. Masters of Death:  The SS-​Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust. New York: Vintage. Sabini, John P. and Maury Silver. 1993. “Destroying the Innocent with a Clear Conscience: A  Sociopsychology of the Holocaust.” In Political Psychology:  Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Neil J. Kressel, 192–​217. New York: Paragon House. Savage, Rowan. 2013. “Modern Genocidal Dehumanization: A New Model.” Patterns of Prejudice 47(2): 139–​61. Segev, Tom. 1987. Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Berkeley Books. Semelin, Jacques. 2003. “Toward a Vocabulary of Massacre and Genocide.” Journal of Genocide Research 5(2): 193–​210. Singer, André. 2014. Night Will Fall. London: Angel TV. Stanton, Gregory. 1998. “The 8 Stages of Genocide.” Online: http://​www.genocidewatch. org/​aboutgenocide/​8stagesofgenocide.html (accessed 7 November 2014). Vetlesen, Arne Johan. 2005. Evil and Human Agency: Understanding Collective Evildoing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waytz, Adam and Nicholas Epley. 2012. “Social Connection Enables Dehumanization.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48(1): 70–​76. Wispé, Lauren. 1986. “The Distinction between Sympathy and Empathy: To Call Forth a Concept, A Word Is Needed.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50(2): 314–​21. Zahavi, Dan. 2010. “Empathy, Embodiment and Interpersonal Understanding:  From Lipps to Schutz.” Inquiry 53(3): 285–​306.

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Chapter 8 ARENDT ON POWER AND VIOLENCE Guido Parietti

Traditionally, power has been considered the central concept of politics (Morgenthau 1965, 4–​5)1 and, likewise, it has often been directly or indirectly reduced to some form of coercive violence. Dispelling this confused equivalence is the aim of On Violence (Arendt 1970b), and it is part of Hannah Arendt’s general attempt to provide an adequate description of our worldliness, which in turn is the basic political condition. Arendt’s “definitions” are brief and cryptic at first glance: Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. (1970b, 44) [P]‌ower, far from being the means to an end, is actually the very condition enabling a group of people to think and act in terms of the means-​end category. (1970b, 51) Violence … is distinguished by its instrumental character. Phenomenologically, it is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength until, in the last stage of their development, they can substitute for it. (1970b, 45) Violence is by nature instrumental; like all means, it always stands in need of guidance and justification through the end it pursues. (1970b, 51)

Before starting to unpack the meaning of these definitions, however, it is necessary to gain at least a basic understanding of Arendt’s stance in proposing them, that is, what exactly it is to define a concept, and why it is so important within her perspective. Perhaps unfortunately, Arendt was impatient about methodological questions, and thus we cannot point to a simple and compact description anywhere in her works; nevertheless, a careful reading allows us to gather the scattered elements into a picture that is faithful, I believe, to our author’s intentions. After this methodological detour it will be easier to bridge

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the gap between what Arendt meant when talking about power and violence and the languages, lay and scientific, to which we are nowadays more accustomed. Once the meaning of Arendt’s concepts is clarified, we shall proceed to compare her depiction with the role of “communicative power” within the political and social theory of Jürgen Habermas, and then with the mainstream debate about the definition of power in the social sciences, chiefly as reconstructed by Steven Lukes.

1. Regarding Method: Spectators, Phenomenology and Worldliness Throughout her oeuvre, Arendt kept an unwavering focus on understanding concepts, appreciating their subtleties and maintaining their distinctions. All her major works can be read as answering, in complex and original ways, simple conceptual questions: what is the meaning of authority (1993a); freedom (1993b); revolution (1990); action, work and labor (1998); thinking, willing and judging (1978b); totalitarianism (2009); and, in our case, violence and power? Per se a primarily definitional interest would be typical of philosophers –​from Socrates to Hobbes, up to contemporary analytic philosophy –​and as such, from social sciences’ perspective, could easily be framed within the usual juxtaposition between theoretical and empirical approaches. This misunderstanding could be avoided by taking seriously Arendt’s protest of not being a philosopher (1978b, 3), but rather a political theorist (2000, 3–​4).2 However, lacking an exact comprehension of what she meant by that, an explicit recognition of the point is often accompanied by an implicit disregard of it, leading to critical discussions of Arendt’s work as if it were to create, or refine, some concepts so as to make them more useful for either concrete political action, a scientific/​historical understanding of it, or both. In this way, the familiar scheme of concepts as “tools,” useful either for action or for explanatory theories, has been applied to Arendt, even though its rejection underpinned her entire work. While her work has surely been influential, and anyone could put her ideas to whatever use they liked, Arendt’s manifest intent was neither to be useful nor to influence others. Rather, she claimed to be interested in understanding for its own sake (2000, 4–​5; Kohn 2005); in this sense, at least, she was quite a philosopher in the classical meaning (Stemberger 1977). Indeed, for all her praises of action, she clearly ascribed her mature self to the un-​ political bios theoreticos (2005c; Hill 1979, 311 ff.). In what sense, then, was she not a philosopher? Besides the contingent hostility for a kind of intellectual that too easily surrendered to Nazism, Arendt’s rejection of the label has to

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do with philosophers’ pertinacious habit of reducing politics to something else, slandering the world of appearances and denying the human condition of plurality. These three philosophical vices coincide from Arendt’s point of view, as they all consist in demeaning action as always for an un-​political end, usually located in some unworldly or otherworldly space,3 which would be one and the same for everyone (because, if the plurality of ends were recognized, it would then be impossible to use any of them as a shared justification). Arendt’s political theorists are not active participants (at least not in the moment they theorize), but neither are they ivory-​tower thinkers, projecting what is good and just for everybody from their own singular perspective, or external objective observers, as an ideal-​typical social scientist could be. Rather, their point of view is that of persons who, while not immediately engaged in action, do not see themselves as different in kind from those that are, but as likewise interested members of the political space. A  space that may go beyond a single community –​as in the case of Kant’s spectatorship of the French Revolution (Kant 1979, 153–​55), an obvious influence on Arendt’s perception of her own stance4 –​but which is still open and egalitarian in the sense that the distinct position of each person does not give them any special claim to truth or technical expertise, beside what they are themselves able to sustain through their words and deeds.5 This stance of “detached involvement” has appeared puzzling to many but, without debating its internal consistency,6 here we can at least see how it is coherent with the need of respecting the autonomy of politics, which would be impinged upon both by the partisan point of view of the actor and by the aloofness of the philosopher (or social scientist) imposing on politics external standards of understanding. For our inquiry, this means that the moralized approach –​intent in passing value judgments on violence and power in general or in specific instances –​and the functionalist attitude typical of social sciences –​that is, the meaning of a “thing,” or social phenomenon, is to be explained through its role within society –​are both to be excluded from a correct understanding of Arendt’s discourse. However, this still tells us nothing as to the method Arendt employed from such a perspective. According to her biographer, Arendt once said:  “I am a sort of phenomenologist … but, ach, not in Hegel’s way  –​or Husserl’s” (Young-​Bruehl 1983, 405). We are not told exactly which kind of phenomenologist she was, but the obvious guess is that this was an oblique reference to her teacher Heidegger, who, against his own mentor Husserl, redefined the meaning of phenomenology at the onset of his masterpiece (Heidegger 1996, § II.7).7 In short, certainly with considerable simplification, Heidegger’s early

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phenomenology is the method to uncover our most basic ways of being, not through theoretical abstraction, but rather starting from our practical comportment  –​in this sense an inversion of Husserl’s epoché, or the suspension of judgment on the external world. This inquiry uncovers a set of existentials, allegedly describing the a priori of our mode of being, just as Kantian categories purportedly defined the a priori of objective perception. Arendt saw the force of this approach, and was deeply influenced by it, but the issue she had was that, despite the initial orientation, Heidegger’s solipsistic bent ultimately reproduced philosophy’s typical unworldliness.8 For Arendt, the world, even in its existential import, cannot be reduced to the question of one’s own being-​in it, because it is understood in the first place as what is in-​between people (1998, 53–​54, 182–​83). That is to say: it is not primarily a matter of a person-​to-​world relation, but rather the point is that a world may exist only within and through person-​to-​person relation, being at the same time their condition of possibility. Plurality is in this sense constitutive of all our practical experience (as we are beings-​in-​the-​world, not abstracted subjects, this Arendt certainly kept from Heidegger). This is not a purely philosophical assertion, for such a plurality would necessarily be, if it were to have any stability, a politically and juridically organized one. At its starkest, this means that without law there would be no world properly so called (2005b, 190). While a phenomenological approach of this kind cannot reproduce the allegedly pre-​ interpretive universality of Kantian categories, the radical Dasein-​centeredness of Heidegger’s existentials would not do either. To be politically relevant –​that is to say, worldly –​Arendt’s concepts have to thread a middle way, so to speak, aiming at intersubjective validity but recognizing the possibility of variation, of being distorted, and even forgotten. At the same time, those concepts differ from the constructivist picture that is nowadays common in social sciences, because they are neither arbitrarily created nor reducible to sociohistorical conditions  –​both of which would preclude the normative claim of individuating the correct concept of power, or violence, as opposed to just one among many –​rather depending on the basic structure of our interactions, so long as more than one of us inhabited this world. Such a human condition is not metaphysically fixed or unchangeable –​if we ever succeeded in leaving Earth behind us, for example, our condition would be radically altered (Arendt 1998, prologue) –​but it nevertheless appears as more fundamental than the ever-​shifting ways of our cultures and societies as they can be examined by social scientists. All the main concepts Arendt looked at are of this kind: categorical, in that they claim to define objective modalities of human life and interaction, but also contingent and existentially relevant, as people can distort or forget them, thereby losing or diminishing their own

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possibilities. It is for these reasons that conceptual and definitional issues are so crucial for Arendt, in contrast with the prevailing attitude in the social sciences and contemporary political theory. This peculiar stance  –​which I  will not defend in depth here, although I  do hope this chapter will performatively contribute to making it plausible –​is largely responsible for the disorientation felt by many among Arendt’s readers, who were left unable to grasp how she could so strongly assert the validity of specific conceptual understandings, against what she saw as her contemporaries’ misgivings, without having any other ground than her own (often contentious) interpretations of equally contingent historical usages and experiences. This attitude is probably what generated the recurring allegations of “essentialism” (Benhabib 1996,123–​24; Pulkkinen 2003; Schaap 2011), which would seem otherwise strange given Arendt’s explicit anti-​ metaphysical commitment (1998, 10–​11). We should be in the position to understand that no reference to “essences” is implied or needed; rather, the normative claims Arendt’s definitions raise are grounded in a transcendental  –​in Kant’s, as well as Heidegger’s, sense, opposed to both “empirical” and “metaphysical” –​inquiry, which starts from nothing more than “to think what we are doing” (1998, 5). These preliminary considerations should be helpful to understanding Arendt in general, but they are especially relevant to the concepts of power and violence, as those are not just embedded in the world, as any concept would be, but also define the modalities of its creation and preservation, as we shall see.

2. Makers’ Violence, Actors’ Power and Their Place in the World Arendt makes quite clear that power corresponds to the faculty of action. As we saw, “act in concert” is her expression of choice, but this can be read almost as a redundancy, for emphasis, because it is action tout-​court that requires a plurality of people, being utterly impossible in isolation. Truly, we could maintain a finer grained distinction, as it is possible that someone alone, opposed to everyone else, would still count as an actor –​so long as their deeds were not completely ignored, even in absolute failure, by those opposing them –​while being entirely powerless. In this sense, powerful actions would delimit a subset of action in general. But that would be a very wide subset, for it would include all meaningful actions, all the actions that are well formed through their beginning (archein, agere) and being carried on (prattein, gerere); a conjunction that already requires the presence of one initiator and others, disposed to cooperate (2005b, 45–​46; 1998, 189).

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The correspondence between violence and work is slightly less explicit, but nevertheless evident through any careful reading. Every work includes “an element of violation” (1998, 139), as it implies the making of something into something else: the archetype of violence is, in a sense, the molding of nature into something that is no longer natural. This harks back to the Greek distinction between nomos and physei (1998, 15), where the former denotes at once the boundaries imposed upon the land for human use (Schmitt 2006), the physical artifacts built to render such limits solid and visible, and the “laws”9 imposed to the end of enforcing them (1998, 63–​64). In this sense, the analogy between production/​work and nomos-​like law is that both modify the processes of natural reality, the former regarding inanimate matter, plants and animals, the latter regarding people’s behavior. On a smaller scale, even trivial things, like dragging a pen over paper to produce a written work, imply a violent element insofar as they modify, however slightly, the natural world. I dwelled a bit on such e­ xamples –​which in our current language we would seldom call violent, except for the coercive application of laws –​because, in showing how violence is embedded into every instance of work, according to Arendt’s definition of it, they should also serve to dispel the simplistic idea that, for Arendt, violence could be entirely reduced to a negative, the elimination of which would only be subject to pragmatic feasibility. Certainly, while insisting on its distinction from power, Arendt also argued for a separation of violence from politics. But, just as the attempt to recover a proper concept of action in The Human Condition should not be read as to imply the demeaning of work and labor (Cooper 1976; Flynn 1991; Markell 2011), likewise the critique of violence should not be confused with condemnation, and the effort to redefine power should not be taken as its apology. To be sure, Arendt harshly criticized the ill-​conceived fascination with violence that some intellectuals (most notably, Sartre) had, as she did not share the illusion that some sort of creative violence could make a new world while magically mending the wounds it had itself inflicted (1970b, 12–​13, 20–​21). But this does not mean we should not take Arendt seriously when she highlights the instrumental quality of violence in bringing forth results (1970b, 79). As for all instrumentalities, the problem is that the means, while justifiable only by their ends, constantly run the risk of outstripping them (1970b, 3), thus losing meaning, and possibly spiraling out of control. This risk calls for a limitation of instrumentality, violence, work, but does not imply any condemnation, as they remain inextricably part of the human condition –​in fact, there can be no meaningful normative stance regarding violence qua talis, only about its concrete instantiations. The converse is true for power, which should not be caricatured as the positive side of the couplet. Just as violence is not intrinsically wrong or evil,

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though it is always to some extent destructive, power is neither good nor just in itself, even while it inherently opens up spaces of freedom and possibilities. We should note how one of the examples of power Arendt employed –​in order to show that not even a despotic government can exist through mere violence without power  –​is that of the organized oppression of masters over slaves (1970b, 50–​51), which neither she nor anyone else would defend as something good.10 In short, both power and violence are non-​evaluative concepts. They have to be, since they correspond to the use or performance of the faculties of action and work, which cannot be meaningfully defined as either good or evil in themselves. Thus, if there is a normative problem, it is not that of pronouncing the validity of one concept at the expense of the other, but rather to understand their proper relationship, so as to avoid a misguided conceptualization leading to diminished practical possibilities. There is, however, a dissymmetry we should consider that helps to explain why a polar interpretation of Arendt’s two concepts may have come naturally. In fact, while violence can destroy power, and would always prevail in a direct confrontation (1970b, 53) –​even while action itself has an intrinsic tendency toward expansion (1998, §32) –​there is no corresponding danger of power outstripping violence. This is not because violence should have no place at all in our condition, as we saw, but rather because it responds to necessities that cannot be neglected (so long as we have to shelter and clothe ourselves, protect our properties and lives, etc.). Obviously, we cannot conjure any material object purely out of our acting together, but the stabilization of the otherwise ephemeral “space of appearances” (1998, §28) requires both the material violence necessary to build cities, as spaces where people can live close together (1998, 201), and the coercion intrinsic to the laws that are necessary to maintain order. Therefore, violence does not run the risk of being crowded out, but only that of expanding uncontrollably. At the same time, and despite the possibility of violence being employed to destroy power, the latter is explicitly characterized as superior to the former (1970b, 50), in that carrying out any organized violence it is necessary to have the power to keep together the group applying said violence. Such a group can be soldiers in war, cops on the streets or the masters oppressing their slaves, but the point is that, beyond any specificity, the very condition of staying together as an action-​capable collective implies power. However, not every instance of violence requires such a collective. This is obvious for our ordinary meaning of violence (a single perpetrator may exercise violence over their victim), but it is also true within Arendt’s own definition, since violence is described as an inherent instrument of work, which, while a world-​building faculty, it is something that a single person can exercise. Power itself, while intrinsically connected with plurality and action in concert, has been defined as the condition

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to act in means-​end terms, which, once violence has been defined by its instrumentality, would imply that there cannot be violence properly so called without power. But, at the same time, “the extreme form of violence is One against All,” the opposite of the extreme of power: “All against One” (1970b, 42). Here there may be a tension, or even a contradiction, within Arendt’s attempt to remain faithful to ordinary language while maintaining her own theoretical standpoint. The tension could be allayed, however, by a more charitable reading of the asserted connection between power and the possibility of instrumental rationality. According to Arendt, power is the condition not only of acting instrumentally, but even of merely thinking in such terms. This means that even those activities that are not “actions” in Arendt’s terms, like work, do depend on power to set their ends in a meaningful way. The artisan, or the murderer, may well do their job alone, but their own capacity of setting this ends and acting on them requires being an actor within a shared political world without which the chain of means and ends is infinite and thus meaningless (given the paradoxical quality of “an end in itself ”: 1998, §21). The kind of alienation people may experience when engaged in works that have no meaning for them has of course been amply explored before and after Arendt, and it should be relatively easy to see how it may correspond to an extreme form of powerlessness. Thus, even while violence may not always immediately require power as the condition of keeping together the group perpetrating it (though that is probably the more common case), it still requires power in the background, in the form of a political order that allows for at least some measure of freedom, to have any meaning. That is to say, while abstractly violence can exist in the complete absence of power (One against All), the kind of violence which can (at least can) be kept within boundaries –​thus possibly achieve its ends rather than outstripping them –​still has power as its necessary condition. This is, I  believe, the deeper sense in which power may be said to be inherently superior to violence, even while the latter can easily destroy the former in any direct confrontation. The asymmetry we just discussed is rooted in the very structure of the relation between power and violence, not in a normative preference for one over the other. Such a structure derives –​I believe, though Arendt is not explicit on this point  –​from the fact that power denotes a state people can be in, whereas violence, being a means to an end, is conceptualized as a “thing” that is done or suffered. This is part of the meaning of the passages quoted at the beginning of this chapter, where violence as a means is contrasted with power defined as the very condition enabling us to think and act in means-​end terms. Once the accent has been placed on this categorical, or modal, meaning of power, it is indeed obvious that we cannot think and act instrumentally (or in

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any other way) unless we are in an at least somewhat powerful condition –​that is, complete powerlessness obviously implies inaction, which, since our mind is not a disembodied spirit, ultimately reflects even on our capacity to think (1998, 324–​25). Thus, while the two concepts correspond to work and action, they do so in a different manner, which is coherent with Arendt’s description of said activities. Violence is a means to work processes, whereas power is a condition created by concerted action, but should be conceptualized neither as an instrument nor as a result separated from its performance. Someone is in power only so long as others are available to cooperate, and ceases to be the moment this disposition to act in concert disappears, as exemplified by the spectacularly quick falls of some political regimes once the absence of actual support is made evident by a determined challenge (1970b, 49–​50). This is the perhaps paradoxical sense in which power, while always being a “potential” (1998, 200), can nevertheless be sustained only in its constant actualization through people’s actions. The opposite is true of violence, which, being embedded in technical instruments, can be summoned at will whenever needed –​so long, that is, as one is in the powerful condition to be able to do so (1970b, 48–​49). The appreciation of Arendt’s rendering of violence and power –​as corresponding to the actualization of work and action  –​allows us to put her attitude toward modernity, and politics in general, into proper perspective. Traditionally, Arendt has been read as a critic of modernity  –​interpreted, with Weber and Heidegger, as the age of instrumental reason –​in the name of an idealized politics without external ends. The latter point, along with the related critique of the “social,” has been widely and variously rejected (Canovan 1978; Pitkin 1981; Bernstein 1986; Schwartz 1989; Pitkin 2000), whereas the former used to effect a division between “modernist” (Biskowski 1995; Benhabib 1996) and “anti-​modernist,” or “post-​modernist” (Honig 1988; Villa 1992) interpreters. On both counts, I  would once more repeat that the relevant point is not to place Arendt for or against something, be it modernity, instrumental reason or the coincidence of the two, but rather to appreciate the potential of an inquiry that does not start or end by passing normative judgments on phenomena and conditions that cannot be reduced to any such univocal characterization. While Arendt’s critique of modern instrumental reason can certainly be likened to Heidegger’s disdain for the technological mindset that he saw as dominating the present time, it is important to understand the different nuance of our author’s position. We should note that she diagnosed the modern problem of instrumentality’s monopolizing tendencies, but actually only as an intermediate phenomenon, already overcome by the elevation of labor, and the corresponding biological appetites, over work as the dominant activity

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(1998, §43–​45). Her point was not merely that of restoring the prominence of action by putting down labor and work; rather, as always, it was the underlying preoccupation to save plurality that led her attempt to describe the proper place of each activity, as well as their relations. The role of work, which necessarily requires some measure of violence even while we would want to keep it within boundaries, is that of building a world to the relief of labor and as a condition of possibility for action –​and the two are the same, as no one could act freely while being compelled by biological necessities. This should be understood both in the sense of the creation of material objects and in the more abstract but equally consequential meaning of creating stories, cultures, laws, and institutions. Moreover, the two aspects should be seen in their relation with both labor and action (Markell 2011). Obviously, tools and instruments are useful to make our labor easier and to better satisfy our appetites; but the material construction of walls, private houses and public spaces is likewise necessary for political action. On the other hand, laws and institutions, as well as a shared culture, are clearly linked to our possibilities of acting in concert, but they are also useful to better organize our labor, which has to respect both explicit rules and behavioral regularities to be carried out efficiently. All these “works” require violence, in different ways and measures, for their creation and/​or enforcement. Thus, as it is intrinsically connected to the use of work, violence is a necessary means of world creation. Power, on the other hand, is the condition to keep the artificial world together, both by sustaining the ongoing efforts necessary to maintain any durable work in proper order, and by giving meaning to it –​and again, the two are perhaps one and the same, as activities perceived as meaningless are easily neglected. As we saw, power is a necessary condition for any meaningful application of violence, as well as for any purposive enterprise; but we should understand this on a richer level than the mere capacity for organization. It is rather the entire span of reason –​theoretical, moral/​practical and technical –​ that requires the presence of power to be actualized. In fact, in a hypothetical “non-​world,” entirely devoid of power and therefore wholly governed by necessity, by definition there would be no beings capable of thinking, willing or acting in pursuit of any end. Arendt’s more situated analyses of historical phenomena such as totalitarianism and revolutions should thus be read not just as cases to demonstrate how power can be created or violence may run amok, but as phenomenological (in her peculiar sense) inquiries into the possibilities of our worldly condition. Thus, for example, the main point of On Revolution is not that of “glorifying the American Revolution and reviling the French” (Dish 2011), nor any similarly broad historical judgment, but rather that of observing how some historical

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events (the interpretation of which remains of course questionable) opened up spaces for freedom and power.11 There is not a theory of power, violence or whatever that is then used to explain history, politics or society –​as would be usual for both political philosophy and the social sciences –​rather, concrete events are harnessed to throw light on possibilities that may be or have been open to us. Indeed, Arendt’s whole oeuvre, from The Human Condition to The Life of the Mind, was, with increasing explicitness, dedicated to understanding possibility and necessity, their distinctness and relations in defining our own condition of worldliness. From this perspective, power and violence are crucially important, as they are “worldly,” not just as inescapable parts of our reality, and not only in their being-​in-​the-​world, as any human concept is, but also in the specific sense that they define the conditions to create and maintain a world; the crucial detail that, according to Arendt, Heidegger momentously missed.

3. Concerning Some Current Ideas of “Power” As we saw, Arendt defines her concepts on grounds quite different from what most theorists and social scientists would be comfortable with. Additionally, phenomenological approaches are generally open to the criticism that, if one does not buy the phenomena’s description and interpretation provided by the author, then there would be no reason available to accept what would follow. While, structurally, such a challenge cannot have a direct answer, it is at least possible to argue for the relevance of an alternative approach by showing the insufficiency of the mainstream ones. Thus, an internal critique of how the concept of power is treated by political theory and the social sciences may help us to recognize the relevance of Arendt’s inquiry, especially if the problems of current approaches are shown to derive from their own methodological assumptions. In assessing some current definitions, and comparing them with Arendt’s, I will focus on power, both because of the greater prominence of definitional questions about it, and because here the concept of violence is relatively less problematic. In fact, even as its framing within Arendt’s theory leads to some unfamiliar results, it does not imply a shift of type from usual conceptualizations. Violence is “something” that is done or perpetrated, wielded as a threat and suffered in its actualization, for both Arendt and the rest of us. Power, on the other hand, needs a deeper redefinition precisely because it is commonly confused with violence and its type  –​that is to say interpreted as denoting “something” that is used by some over or against others, wielded and suffered and so forth –​rather than understood as a categorical condition we may find ourselves in.

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As anticipated, here I will proceed by first examining Jürgen Habermas’s peculiar reception of Arendt’s concept of power (1977), which has both significantly influenced subsequent interpretations and been crucial for the development of Habermas’s own theory. Then I will turn to Steven Lukes’s reconstruction of the “three dimensions of power” (2005), which is particularly useful as it subsumes a large part of the mainstream debates about power, representing at once one of its most advanced results. 3.1 Habermas and the normative use of empirical diagnoses Habermas’s prominence in the political theory and philosophy of the past four decades has largely been predicated on his ambitious efforts to ground normativity in epistemological, social and political domains. In doing so, his most characteristic trait has been an indefatigable commitment to synthesis and mediation between different, often opposite, approaches. Concerning politics, this has meant trying to reconcile the insights of empirical sociology and political science with those of normative theory, which itself includes socialist, liberal, republican and radical democratic elements. Within this complex attempt, most extensively developed in Between Facts and Norms (Habermas 1996), the concept of “communicative power” –​lifted from Arendt (Habermas 1977), albeit through a “creative misreading” (Canovan 1983)  –​played a crucial role. In short, and once again with considerable simplification, the central insight is that the “administrative power” the state employs to fulfill its necessary role in integrating the different “subsystems” that make up society (Parsons 2005; Luhmann 2012) cannot be reproduced except by channeling, through the medium of law (Habermas 1996, 150, 299), the “communicative power” created by free interactions among citizens that must remain beyond the state’s control (Habermas 1996, ch.8). Habermas’s claim is to be developing the basic Arendtean insight  –​which he interpreted as the assertion that legitimate power can be created only through non-​instrumental communicative interactions (1977) –​thanks to his own theory of the rational potential of the lifeworld (1984; 1987), while at the same time correcting the problems borne by the alleged unilateral quality of Arendt’s ideas. According to Habermas, in fact, Arendt held a normatively charged idea of power, which would have made her blind to the strategic, instrumental and ideological aspects of modern politics (1977, 14 ff). We have already observed how this “moralized” reading of Arendt’s power is interpretively wrong. But the point goes beyond mere exegesis, as all the main problems Habermas attributes to Arendt are actually issues only for his own interpretation of “communicative power.” We have seen how power, far

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from being simply in contrast to instrumentality, is actually understood by Arendt as the very condition of acting purposively, therein including quite un-​ communicative (and morally reprehensible) kinds of collective action, like the domination of masters over slaves. Whatever one thinks about such an idea of power, claiming it to be naive regarding the grim realities of actual politics is implausible on its face. It was likewise strange to accuse Arendt of missing the dangers of ideology, not only because the topic had a very prominent role in her discussion of totalitarianism (2009, ch. 13), but also because her conceptualization of power, given its categorical quality and the explicit link with the “space of appearances,” is clearly open to a thematization of public opinion’s organized distortion. In other words, the problems of Arendt’s “power” –​which, according to Habermas, show the need to integrate it with the empirical results of sociology and political science –​exist only for Habermas’s peculiar interpretation of it. Nevertheless, if Habermas’s dualist view of power were successful on its own terms, one could excuse its hermeneutical problems and still adopt it as a viable framework. There are reasons, however, to question the very possibility of its attaining such success. In fact, besides taking issue with the substantive success of Habermas’s enterprise –​a very contested ground, which we cannot assess here –​the main problem from the point of view of understanding power is the lack of any single concept of it. That is to say, once power has been split into “administrative” and “communicative” according to Habermas’s reconstruction, it is not clear why the two should both be called “power,” given that they have hardly anything in common. Thus, Habermas’s elaboration still leaves us in need of a unified definition of power,12 possibly explaining the relation between the two sides of it; but such a definition is not provided. Moreover, even if considered separately, the two concepts of power are internally problematic. “Communicative power” neither corresponds to nor subsumes the common meaning of power, which would leave the justification for its use wholly to its internal theoretical validity. From this perspective, while the alleged tendency toward just and rational results may or may not be ascertained empirically, the problem is that it cannot, within Habermas’s own discursive framework, coherently be employed as a normative ground. This can be demonstrated through Karl-​Otto Apel’s internal critique of Habermas’s project (Apel 1992; 1998). The gist of Apel’s criticism is an elaborated version of the naturalistic fallacy: one cannot use any empirical observation to ground normativity as such, because any knowledge we may validly acquire depends on a communicative practice that must already have established its own validity (as we no longer believe in the possibility of establishing any truth from some idealized external standpoint). Thus, even if it were empirically true that the communicative generation of power, being rooted in the civil society/​

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lifeworld, would tend to produce good and rational results, that fact still could not be validly used to justify the normative commitment to the dualist system of deliberative democracy Habermas advocated. The only way to make good on the normative content ascribed to communicative power, through its link with the lifeworld, would be to attribute to the latter a telos toward rationality that is both factual (i.e., not transcendental or merely normative) and established with theoretical certainty (i.e., beyond the vagaries of empirical observation). But such a way out would clearly conflict with Habermas’s “post-​metaphysical” stance (1992). According to Apel, this would be the “somewhat unacknowledged or unrecognized relic of the speculative philosophy of history” (1992, 131) hiding under the naturalistic fallacy of attributing normative value to alleged empirical tendencies. Arendt did not live long enough to see the development of Habermas’s mature thinking,13 but it is likely that she would have agreed with such a criticism, given both the common Kantian root and her severe criticism of philosophy of history. The case for “administrative power” is simpler, as Habermas there adopted the point of view of sociology and political science, accepting their existing conceptualizations as valid descriptions of the observable actualizations of power, whose only crucial defect would be their blindness to the normative side communicative power represents. In employing “administrative power” as corresponding to the empirical picture common in the social sciences, Habermas actually conflates structural (or systemic) with “action-​theoretical” approaches. This is relevant because while the latter (for example, the common definition of power as domination of someone over someone else) may still be thought of as power, even though that cannot exhaust its definition, the former actually produces the negation of power,14 by reducing interactions to functional or systemic necessities. However, the most serious issue is that all these definitions –​ besides the internal differentiations Habermas glosses over  –​are themselves unable to provide a coherent concept of power without embroiling themselves in tautological circularities, as we shall see in the next section. Habermas takes Arendt’s “power” as to coincide with the “generation” –​ itself normatively oriented to mutual understanding  –​of a power that can then be employed purposively, according to the model of strategic action. In doing this he seemingly remains close to the structure of Arendt’s thinking –​which as we saw presents power as a necessary condition for maintaining political order, and even for the employment of violence itself. However, by neglecting the shift of type effected by Arendt, he falls back on the more usual academic discussions of power, conceptualized as a “thing” (a “media” in the system-​theoretic jargon Habermas adopted) to be had and used, which, despite its familiarity, is actually unable to capture the meaning of the term as it is employed in our ordinary language.

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3.2 Lukes and the debate on “power” in the social sciences To get an idea of the state of the concept within social science, we can follow the debate about the “three dimensions” (or “faces”) of power, as reconstructed by Steven Lukes (2005). Our starting point is Dahl’s 1957 definition, still widely employed despite decisive critiques:  “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do” (1957, 202–​3). According to Bachrach and Baratz (1962), the problem with Dahl’s definition was that it identified power only when exercised in visible decisions  –​later labeled “exercise fallacy” (Morriss 2002, §3.2; Dowding 2011, 229–​30) –​but power need not be visible, since powerful actors may exclude some outcomes while favoring others, without explicitly displaying their power. The ability to covertly shape the agenda is the key example of the “second face” of power, which is often available merely as the result of being in a dominant position, without taking any specific action. According to Lukes, who published the first edition of his famous work in 1974, this critique did not go far enough, as he found a third dimension of power in the shaping of the perception of available options (2005, 25 ff.): a systemic distortion that is not analyzable in terms of behaviorism or methodological individualism, and not even cognizable without presupposing counterfactual conditions (2005, 144–​50).15 As Lukes later recognized, this entire debate misunderstood the logical relation between “power to” (meaning any kind of power to do anything) and “power over” (domination of someone over someone else), as if they were opposite concepts, whereas “the latter is a sub-​species of the former” (2005, 69–​74). The most advanced contributions, in fact, variously analyze power in terms of “power to,” potentiality or potentia (Morriss 2002; Lukes 2005, 69–​85; Altini 2010). These developments share some ground with Arendt’s ideas, and could represent an opening for their wider acceptance,16 but by not acknowledging what we have called her shift of type, toward a categorical or modal understanding of power, they are still unable to provide a definition that is both internally consistent and coherent with the everyday use of the concept. Since they work on the underlying assumption that power is something to be observed empirically (be it domination over others, or a capacity someone possesses), rather than a category informing our relation to the world, these debates, despite their internal differentiations, all end up being about how power works, not about defining what it is. In other words, they tacitly assume to be talking about an “object,” and then conceive their definitional efforts mainly in functionalist terms, just as one would define a machine  –​ which we can plainly view, even if we know absolutely nothing of what it is –​by explaining how it works and what it is good for. Accordingly they propose different operational definitions, geared toward measuring power and its

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effects –​and possibly failing at that (Isaac 1987, 19–​21) –​not toward defining it as a concept. To Lukes’s question: “What interests us when we are interested in power?” (1986, 17), the prevailing answer has not been “its concept.” Instead, “What is power?” has been understood to mean: “Which phenomena are instances of power (and how do they work)?” This is an obviously relevant question, perhaps the most relevant, which can nevertheless find no answer if we do not have a viable definition of power in the first place. But the proposed definitions, largely because they have been unable to recognize the categorical meaning of power as a condition we may be in, cannot be said to be viable, as they are circular, or tautological. This is readily apparent if we consider that “can” obviously equals “having the power to,” hence, for example, Dahl’s definition could be reduced to: • one has power if one has the power to get others to do something they would not otherwise do. Observing the equivalence between “can” (or “be able to,” “be capable,” etc.) and “having the power to” is useful not only to expose the circularity, but also as the shortest way to show the dependence of “power over” on the wider “power to.” The point, stated most clearly by Peter Morriss (2002, §5.3), should by now be settled, though it has been a matter of contention for a long time. More recently, a related confusion has emerged around the tripartite conceptualization, often employed by feminist theorists, of “power over,” “power to” and “power with.”17 These terms, despite the cautious way in which they were (re)introduced by Amy Allen,18 have been interpreted as if they represented alternative courses of actions and/​or factual conditions, often with moralistic overtones (Mansbridge 1996; Kraft 2000; Berger 2005). But, from a conceptual perspective, it is clear that there is just one overarching notion of power, which is always a “power to,” regardless of its being over someone, with someone or of its moral significance in any given case: if your power over/​with/​ from-​whatever-​source-​you-​want is not the power to do (or abstain from doing) something, the power to obtain (or hinder) something, then it is not power at all. But again, saying that “power is the power to…” is immediately circular and does not advance the comprehension of the concept. The second point that should be noted is that, even if these definitions were not circular, they would still not be defining “power,” but rather the conditions according to which we could correctly say that someone has power. This would be appropriate if power were an observable object –​it is in fact consistent with Dahl’s explicit intent of reducing it to a measurable quantity (Dahl 1957, 202–​9) –​but it is not the same as a conceptual definition. In fact, if the point is to get empirically sound results, then the conditions to detect

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something must not be equivalent to a full definition –​otherwise, the inquiry would not yield any new knowledge; it would be mere data-​gathering, not inductive science. As a consequence, even if it were true that power is better conceptualized as an empirically observable “thing” (Dahl 1957, 201), a proper understanding of what the “thing” is –​different from a set of facts from which its presence could be inferred –​would still be missing. The observed circularity could itself be seen as a result of this conundrum, as an operational definition can be obtained from a list of conditions only if the list encompassed all the possible instances of the concept.19 Of course, such a list would be unmanageably long (which is why we use general concepts), but the need for it is obviated by the use of the same concept as part of the definition. Thus, “can,” meaning “having the power to,” implicitly stands for all the instances of power, producing the illusion of a definition securing the impossible goal of being at once conceptually exhaustive and employable as an empirical test. After going through these observations, we can see that most definitions of power –​actually being very condensed theories –​have three basic components: 1. the circular: “power is the power to…” 2. the reference to an agent having power “A” 3. the reference to the exercise of A’s power over one or more subjects “B” These three elements may be said to define the structure of the discussion about power. Points 2 and 3 have been amply discussed, and variously denied, as we briefly summarized following Lukes’s reconstruction. The negation of point 2, the de-​subjectification of power, or its defacing (Hayward 2000), has been a staple of Foucauldian, or more generally “postmodern,” positions (Digeser 1992; Brass 2000; Widder 2004; Hörnqvist 2010). From another perspective, an analogously depersonalizing thrust regarding power can be observed in systems theory (Borch 2005), and to a lesser extent throughout every functionalist approach in both sociology and political science. Under these perspectives, broadly speaking, power would be not a property of “someone” (either an individual, a group or a single institution), but rather inherent in the whole system of relations society is made of. Concerning such “ultra-​radical” (Lukes 2005, 88)  approaches, we could again follow Lukes in noting that, when their claims are taken seriously, they result in so large an extension of the meaning of power (again, understood as an object or phenomenon) that it would coincide with most, or even all, social relationships (Foucault 1988, 3). Therefore, the resulting concept would be scarcely useful as an analytical tool and, after all, not so radical (Lukes 2005, 97 ff). The price paid for a significant rethinking of power would be the loss

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of the concept itself. Most important for our perspective, it is clear that even for these conceptualizations, the focus remains on empirical and operational aspects, while the circularity of point 1 is perhaps evaded, but once again left untouched. The very confusion plaguing the debates showcases the theoretical relevance of looking for a definition of a concept of power. Most important, “power” is not just one among the concepts we make use of while studying politics and societies. The way in which power is perceived and understood is clearly of special importance for actual political actions, as many contributors to the debates already noted, and as we may now see more keenly thanks to Arendt’s point view. A purely descriptive social science could perhaps do well without an adequate notion of power –​and that is why a purely descriptive social science could not really be about politics –​but people willing to act certainly cannot. A proper concept, to be clear, by itself would say nothing about empirical facts and would do nothing about concrete actions. It would, instead merely define which occurrences may meaningfully be gathered under the label of power and which may not. Thus, the usefulness of a correct conceptualization would be negative: not to produce knowledge but to avoid errors –​as proper for a critical enterprise, in the Kantian sense, as Arendt’s was.

4. Conclusion In this chapter, I tried to reconstruct the concepts of power and violence as Arendt described them. I started with a methodological digression, since most of the problems in understanding what Arendt was doing can be traced back to that level, which she left largely implicit. Once her standpoint has been clarified, Arendt’s concepts of violence and power can be grasped as defining the actualizations of work and action in their capacity of defining our worldliness. In this sense, violence and power have been shown to represent a good vantage point to tie together some contentious points in the interpretation of Arendt’s thought: her selective appropriation of Heidegger’s phenomenology, her non-​moralized view of politics and her attitude toward modernity and instrumental reason. If more commonly employed conceptual frameworks were adequate in themselves, the discussion of Arendt’s ideas about power and violence would merely be of hermeneutical interest. However, as I briefly tried to show, that is not the case: most would promptly recognize the central relevance of the concept of power for politics and political thought, yet they would hardly be able to define or use it in a coherent way. Habermas, the leading political theorist for the past 40 years, does not have an explicit concept of power, nor does he use it in a coherent way, partly because he yields to the temptation of

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embedding normative elements into purportedly descriptive concepts. More generally, the debate within the social sciences, which here I have briefly summarized following Steven Lukes’s engagement with it, has been unable to give a definition of power without ending up tied in tautologies. Given the wide methodological gap, it is difficult to say how acknowledging Arendt’s ideas could directly yields results from a social science perspective. Nevertheless, especially in view of the conceptual insufficiency of currents ideas about power, at least the critical results may hold, and those would entail a limit to what may be studied in the familiar modes of causality and functionalism. Power implies contingency, as the opposite of necessity, and as such is at the center of Arendt’s critique of the social sciences as incapable of perceiving radical novelties, or unexpected tragedies (Baehr 2002; 2010c). Having discussed the role of conceptual definitions within Arendt’s thought, we can now better see that the issue is not just that of ascertaining whether social scientists could indeed address the emergence of unexpected phenomena, but rather that the categorical apparatus defining social science as such does not have much space for power, politics and thus novelties, in Arendt’s sense. The categorical meaning of power thus functions as a critical limit; but, as we saw, Arendt’s concepts are embedded into conditions that are empirical, in part literally made of material objects. In this domain, the factual backdrop of a condition that is not reducible to empirical analyses, there may be a productive, if limited, encounter between Arendt and political/​social scientists. Granted, Arendt’s point of view remains distant from those adopted by the mainstream of both political theory and the social sciences, perhaps too much so to be realistically acceptable, or even comprehensible, within their frameworks. Nevertheless, the observed problems in defining a concept as basic as “power” should at least lead us to consider the limits of our intellectual enterprises, and possibly make us curious about alternative perspectives.

Notes 1 It is less clear whether such centrality continues to obtain, as the difficulties in giving a decent definition of power clash with the social sciences’ increasing appetite for precision and formalization. 2 Nowadays, the video of the interview with Gaus is easily available on the Internet, and it is worth watching. 3 Here the difference between classical philosophy and modern social sciences is that the determination of the end is allegedly moved from the metaphysical to the social realm; but, from Arendt’s perspective there is the same fault in subjecting politics to standards external to it. 4 The Kantian concept of “enlarged mentality” or “enlarged thought” is the most relevant one to how Arendt understood the peculiar detached-​but-​involved position of the theorist (1982, especially 39–​46).

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5 For Arendt, the living archetype of this “openness” was Karl Jaspers (2005d, 183; 1970a). 6 Arendt’s ideas of judgment, and her specific appropriation of Kant, have been a matter of contention among scholars for decades (Beiner 1982; Benhabib 1988; Steinberger 1990; Ferrara 1998; Passerin d’Entrèves 2000; Kateb 2001; Zerilli 2005; Deutscher 2007; Marshall, 2010). For recent sympathetic and, respectively, critical positions see Degryse (2011); Weidenfeld (2013). 7 The literature on the relationship, philosophical and personal, between Arendt and Heidegger is vast; see, for example, Canovan (1990); Villa (1996); Bernstein (1997); Birmingham (2002). To this day, the best short piece to gather a basic understanding of the connections and differences remains Hinchman and Hinchman (1984). 8 This is itself a contentious characterization, but it is that which Arendt held, and therefore the one relevant for our discussion. The strongest assertion of this critique is perhaps in a striking summary of Heidegger’s results: “Since I cannot be a world-​creating being, it could perhaps be my role to be a world-​destroying being” (Arendt 2005d, 177). After this (What Is the Philosophy of Existence was published in 1946), Arendt would never again be so acrimonious against her mentor, but the underlying problem with the unworldliness of philosophy, and with Heidegger as the pinnacle of this tendency, remained the same (Villa 1996, ch.7). Indeed, Arendt’s celebrated “recovery of the public world” (Hill 1979) can in good part be interpreted as a recovery from what Heidegger had done to the concept. 9 Arendt distinguishes between various senses of “law,” most relevantly by separating, and opposing both to the usual idea of law as command, the “work-​like” law as a pre-​ political, and necessarily violent, nomos from the concept of lex as a product of action, thus power (1998, 63; 1990, 186–​87, 210; 1970b, 39–​40). While all laws may require violence, to coerce their respect, the distinction as to their origin is relevant to the vexing question of the exclusionary character intrinsic to political/​legal communities (Honig 1991; Lindahl 2006; Parietti 2009; Volk 2010). 10 Even totalitarianism is said to rely on a minimal base of power, constituted by the organization of the secret police and their informers. This, however, may highlight a problematic tension, as the logic of totalitarianism, being the complete submission of reality to an abstract developmental law, would seem to exclude power properly so called (Arendt 2009, chs. 12–​13). Likewise, the total domination realized in the concentration camps, if generalized, would absorb any power into the strictures of violent necessity. Perhaps the tension may be eased by conceiving actual totalitarianism as an “imperfect” realization of its own logic, so that while the latter would exclude power the former could not practically do without a modicum of it. 11 Something that, according to Arendt, both revolutions did –​albeit to different extents, and both incompletely –​meaning that the stylized contrast that she is often held to is a caricature of her thought, despite the errors in historical interpretations that may be imputed to her from our present vantage point. 12 Indeed, it is arguable that both, taken by themselves, are far from univocal, given that the concepts of power social scientists employ are quite varied, and Habermas’s own “communicative power” is susceptible to different readings (Flynn 2004). 13 There exists only one citation, so far as I know, of Habermas by Arendt. In light of later developments, the note is interestingly appreciative and dismissive at once, making an example out of the difficulty in breaking free from “outworn [Marxist] theories and slogans” (1970b, 96–​97).

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14 Niklas Luhmann, a privileged reference point for Habermas, in fact explicitly questions the relevance of the concept of power as such (1982, 107). 15 This may be called “ideology” or “false consciousness,” but such terms were and still are quite disreputable within the empirically minded approaches Lukes was debating with. 16 In Lukes’s original account, Arendt’s conception of power, which he then categorized alongside Parsons’, was sharply criticized (2005, 30–​34). 17 The original use of the locution “power-​with” seems to be in the 1925 paper: Follett (2003). 18 “Although power-​to is perhaps the most basic of the three senses I have delineated, it is not opposed to either power-​over or power-​with. … Power-​over, power-​to, and power-​ with are not best understood as distinct types or forms of power; rather, they represent analytically distinguishable features of a situation” (Allen 1998, 37). See also Pansardi (2012). 19 This would negate the original Socratic definition of what a concept is –​that is, not just a list of ­examples –​but if the list could really be all-​encompassing, it would work in the same way for the empirical interests harbored by most social scientists.

References Allen, Amy. 1998. “Rethinking Power.” Hypatia 13, 21–​40. Altini, Carlo. 2010. “ ‘Potentia’ as ‘Potestas’: An Interpretation of Modern Politics between Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 36, 231–​52. Apel, Karl-​Otto. 1992. “Normatively Grounding ‘Critical Theory’ through a Recourse to the Lifeworld? A Transcendental-​Pragmatic Attempt to Think with Habermas against Habermas.” In Philosophical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment, edited by Axel Honneth, Thomas McCarthy, Claus Offe and Albrecht Wellmer, 125–​70. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —​—​—​.1998. “Auflösung der Diskursethik? Zur Architektonik der Diskursdifferenzierung in Habermas’ Faktizität und Geltung.” In Auseinandersetzungen. Erprobung des transzendentalpragmatischen Ansatzes, 727–​838. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Arendt, Hannah. 1970a. “Karl Jaspers:  A  Laudation.” In Men in Dark Times, 71–​80. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. —​—​—​. 1970b. On Violence. New York: Harvest Books. —​—​—​.1978b. The Life of the Mind. San Diego, CA, New York: Harcourt. —​—​—​.1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​.1990. On Revolution. London, New York: Penguin. —​—​—​. 1993a. “What Is Authority?” In Between Past and Future, 91–​141. London, New York: Penguin. —​ —​ —​ . 1993b. “What Is Freedom?” In Between Past and Future, 143–​ 71. London, New York: Penguin. —​—​—​. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 2000. “What Remains? The Language Remains: A Conversation with Gunter Gaus.” In The Portable Hannah Arendt, edited by Peter Baehr, 3–​22. London, New York: Penguin. —​—​—​. 2005b. “Introduction into Politics.” In The Promise of Politics, 93–​200. New York: Schocken Books. —​—​—​. 2005c. “Prologue.” In Responsibility and Judgment. New York: Schocken Books. —​—​—​. 2005d. “What Is Existential Philosophy?” In Essays in Understanding, 1930–​1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, edited by Jerome Kohn, 163–​87. New York: Schocken.

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—​—​—​. 2009. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego, CA, New York, London: Harcourt. Bachrach, Peter and Morton S. Baratz. 1962. “Two Faces of Power.” The American Political Science Review 56, 947–​52. Baehr, Peter. 2002. “Identifying the Unprecedented: Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Critique of Sociology.” American Sociological Review 67, 804–​31. —​—​—​. 2010c. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Beiner, Ronald. 1982. “Interpretive Essay.” In Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Benhabib, Seyla. 1988. “Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics in Arendt’s Thought.” Political Theory 16, 29–​51. —​—​—​. 1996. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. London: SAGE. Berger, Bruce K. 2005. “Power Over, Power With, and Power to Relations:  Critical Reflections on Public Relations, the Dominant Coalition, and Activism.” Journal of Public Relations Research 17, 5–​28. Bernstein, Richard J. 1986. “Rethinking the Social and the Political.” In Philosophical Profiles: Essays in a Pragmatic Mode. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 238–​59. —​—​—​. 1997. “Provocation and Appropriation:  Hannah Arendt’s Response to Martin Heidegger.”Constellations 4, 153–​71. Birmingham, Peg. 2002. “Heidegger and Arendt:  The Birth of Political Action and Speech.” In Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, edited by François Raffouland and David Pettigrew, 191–​202. New York: State University of New York Press. Biskowski, Lawrence J. 1995. “Politics Versus Aesthetics: Arendt’s Critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger.”Review of Politics 57, 59–​89. Borch, Christian. 2005. “Systemic Power: Luhmann, Foucault, and Analytics of Power.” Acta sociologica 48, 155–​67. Brass, Paul R. 2000. “Foucault Steals Political Science.”Annual Review of Political Science 3, 305–​30. Canovan, Margaret. 1978. “The Contradictions of Hannah Arendt’s Political Thought.”Political Theory 6, 5–​26. —​ —​ —​ . 1983. “A Case of Distorted Communication:  A  Note on Habermas and Arendt.”Political Theory 11, 105–​16. —​—​—​. 1990. “Socrates or Heidegger? Hannah Arendt’s Reflections on Philosophy and Politics.”Social Research 57, 135–​65. Cooper, Leroy A. 1976. “Hannah Arendt’s Political Philosophy:  An Interpretation.”The Review of Politics 38, 145–​76. Dahl, Robert A. 1957. “The Concept of Power.”Behavioral Science 2, 201–​15. Degryse, Annelies. 2011. “Sensus communis as a Foundation for Men as Political Beings: Arendt’s Reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgment.”Philosophy & Social Criticism 37, 345–​58. Deutscher, Max. 2007. Judgment After Arendt. Aldershot: Ashgate. Digeser, Peter. 1992. “The Fourth Face of Power.”The Journal of Politics 54, 977–​1007. Disch, Lisa. 2011. “How Could Hannah Arendt Glorify the American Revolution and Revile the French? Placing On Revolution in the Historiography of the French and American Revolutions.”European Journal of Political Theory 10, 350–​71. Dowding, Keith (ed.) (2011), Encyclopedia of Power. London: SAGE. Ferrara, Alessandro. 1998. “Judgment, Identity and Authenticity:  A  Reconstruction of Hannah Arendt’s Interpretation of Kant.”Philosophy & Social Criticism 24, 113–​36.

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Flynn, Bernard. 1991. “The Places of the Work of Art in Arendt’s Philosophy.”Philosophy & Social Criticism 17, 217–​28. Flynn, Jeffrey. 2004. “Communicative Power in Habermas’s Theory of Democracy.”European Journal of Political Theory 3, 433–​54. Follett, Mary P. 2003. “Power.” In Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, edited by Henry Metcalf and Lyndall Urwick, 72–​95. New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1988. “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom.” In The Final Foucault, edited by James Bernauer and David Rasmussen, 1–​20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, J. 1977. “Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power.”Social Research 44, 3–​24. —​—​—​. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1.  Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. —​—​—​. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2. Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. —​—​—​. 1992. Postmetaphysical Thinking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —​—​—​. 1996. Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hayward, Clarissa R. 2000. De-​facing Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1996. Being and Time. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hill, Melvyn A., ed. 1979. Hannah Arendt:  The Recovery of the Public World. New  York:  St. Martin’s Press. Hinchman, Lewis P. and Sandra K. Hinchman. 1984. “In Heidegger’s Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Phenomenological Humanism.”Review of Politics 46, 183–​211. Honig, Bonnie. 1988. “Arendt, Identity, and Difference.”Political Theory 16, 77–​98. —​—​—​. 1991. “Declarations of Independence:  Arendt and Derrida on the Problem of Founding a Republic.” The American Political Science Review 85, 97–​113. Hörnqvist, Magnus. 2010. Risk, Power and the State: After Foucault. New York: Routledge-C ​ avendish. Isaac, Jeffrey C. 1987. “Beyond the Three Faces of Power:  A  Realist Critique.”Polity 20, 4–​31. Kant, Immanuel. 1979. The Conflict of the Faculties. New York: Abaris Books. Kateb, George. 2001. “The Judgment of Arendt.” In Judgment, Imagination, and Politics: Themes from Kant and Arendt, edited by Ronald Beiner, 121–​38. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kohn, Jerome. 2005. “Introduction.” In Essays in Understanding, 1930–​1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken. Kraft, Julia. 2000. “Power-​With, not Power-​Over.”Peace News 2439: 35. Lindahl, Hans. 2006. “Give and Take:  Arendt and the Nomos of Political Community.”Philosophy & Social Criticism 32, 881–​901. Luhmann, Niklas. 1982. Trust and Power. Two Works by Niklas Luhmann. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc. —​—​—​. 2012. Introduction to Systems Theory. London: Polity. Lukes, Steven. 1986. “Introduction.” In Power, edited by Steven Lukes. New York: New York University Press. —​—​—​. 2005. Power: A Radical View. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mansbridge, Jane. 1996. “Using Power/​Fighting Power:  The Polity.” In Democracy and Difference, edited by Seyla Benhabib, 46–​66. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Markell, Patchen. 2011. “Arendt’s Work:  On the Architecture of The Human Condition.”College Literature 38, 15–​44.

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Marshall, David L. 2010. “The Origin and Character of Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Judgment.”Political Theory 38, 367–​93. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1965. Politics Among Nations. New York: Knopf. Morriss, Peter. 2002. Power: A Philosophical Analysis. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Pansardi, Pamela. 2012. “Power to and Power over: Two Distinct Concepts of Power?”Journal of Political Power 5, 73–​89. Parietti, Guido. 2009. “Osservazioni circa diritto e mondo in Hannah Arendt.”La Cultura 47, 495–​516. Parsons, Talcott. 2005. The Social System. London: Routledge. Passerin d’Entrèves, M. 2000. “Arendt’s Theory of Judgment.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, edited by D. R. Villa, 245–​60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pitkin, Hanna F. 1981. “Justice: On Relating Private and Public.”Political Theory 9, 327–​52. —​—​—​. 2000. The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pulkkinen, Tuiia. 2003. “Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Philosophy.”Alternatives: Globa l, Local, Political 28, 215–​32. Schaap, Andrew. 2011. “Enacting the Right to Have Rights: Jacques Rancière’s Critique of Hannah Arendt.”European Journal of Political Theory 10, 22–​45. Schmitt, Carl. 2006. “Appropriation/​Distribution/​Production.” In The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum, 323–​35. New York: Telos Press. Schwartz, Joseph. 1989. “Arendt’s Politics:  The Elusive Search for Substance.”Praxis International 9, 25–​46. Steinberger, Peter J. 1990. “Hannah Arendt on Judgment.”American Journal of Political Science 34, 803–​21. Stemberger, Dolf. 1977. “The Sunken City:  Hannah Arendt’s Idea of Politics.”Social Research 44, 132–​46. Villa, Dana R. 1992. “Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of Political Action.”Political Theory 20, 274–​308. —​—​—​. 1996. Arendt and Heidegger:  The Fate of the Political. Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press. Volk, Christian. 2010. “From Nomos to Lex:  Hannah Arendt on Law, Politics, and Order.”Leiden Journal of International Law 23, 759–​79. Weidenfeld, Matthew C. 2013. “Visions of Judgment: Arendt, Kant, and the Misreading of Judgment.”Political Research Quarterly 66, 254–​66. Widder, Nathan. 2004. “Foucault and Power Revisited.”European Journal of Political Theory 3, 411–​32. Young-​Bruehl, Elisabeth. 1983. Hannah Arendt. For Love of the World. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Zerilli, Linda M.  G. 2005. “We Feel Our Freedom:  Imagination and Judgment in the Thought of Hannah Arendt.” Political Theory 33, 158–​88.

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Chapter 9 THE THEORY OF TOTALITARIAN LEADERSHIP Peter Baehr

Introduction What attributes did Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin possess that enabled them to become the supreme leaders of totalitarian regimes? What did these men achieve in the course of their totalitarian careers? Were the Führer and his Bolshevik nemesis essential or auxiliary to the regimes they led? What, exactly, do totalitarian leaders do that is quintessentially totalitarian, as distinct from simply tyrannical or authoritarian? Hannah Arendt answered all these questions, yet her theory of totalitarian leadership is among the least known and, in narrative terms, more fugitive aspects of her oeuvre. Instead of confronting the issue of leadership directly, she unravels it over the 150 pages that make up Part III of The Origins of Totalitarianism ([1951d] 1973). Arendt’s rationale will be explained presently. But it indubitably makes large demands on readers who, bereft of a central statement, struggle to make sense of her labyrinthine account. This chapter examines Arendt’s theory of totalitarian leadership.1 It begins with her description of “the masses,” proceeds to her account of Hitler and Stalin as rulers of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and concludes with a discussion of Arendt as a covert sociologist: a thinker who recurrently resorts to sociological explanations, despite her express opposition to sociology as a discipline. Throughout this chapter, Arendt’s notion of leadership is contrasted with the Weberian idea of charismatic domination, an idea she thought absurd when applied to totalitarian conditions.

Masses “There is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.” (Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 320)

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Hannah Arendt’s theory of totalitarian mass leaders –​Hitler and Stalin –​is integral to Part III of The Origins of Totalitarianism, yet its centrality is easy to underestimate.2 While her treatments of the “mob” and the “masses” are explicitly heralded in subsection titles to Chapters 4, 5 and 10 of Origins, totalitarian leaders receive no such explicit attention. What explains that asymmetry? For Arendt, leaders are not distinct from masses; they are entirely imbricated with them. Repeatedly, Arendt describes the totalitarian Leader –​ almost always employed in the upper case –​as the “agent,” “impersonator” and “functionary” of the masses so that, in the totalitarian context, he who says masses, says leader too. Equally, totalitarian movements are mass organizations (323).3 In a passage that appears to deflate the leader’s integral importance, Arendt claims that Hitler “depends on the ‘will’ of the masses he embodies as the masses depend on him.” Without the leader, the masses would “lack external representation.” Without the masses, “the Leader is a nonentity” (325). The significance she assigns to the masses requires us to be sure of what Arendt means by this and other cognate terms. Totalitarianism is only possible, Arendt claims, in societies in which classes have dissolved into masses, where party politics has been reduced to ideological posturing, and where the responsibilities of citizenship have succumbed to apathy on a large scale. Classes are interest-​bound formations, determined by their place in the productive process. They provide individuals with a sense of social membership and solidarity. Conventional political parties represent class forces to various degrees. Masses are something quite different and are not to be confused with the riff-​raff of bohemians, crackpots, gangsters, outcasts and conspirators Arendt dubs “the mob.” Masses come in two complementary forms. First, they compose individuals who exist within the interstices of class society and party politics. Bereft of organizational affiliation, inexperienced in conventional politics and lacking conviction, masses call down a plague on all houses. Having never been previously organized by the party system, or ever convinced by its rhetoric, they offer virgin territory for the totalitarian movements to plow. Alongside this first meaning of “masses” –​a permanent fixture of modern societies, witness to the inability of class formations to incorporate many segments of the populace –​Arendt introduces another. On this reckoning, masses are the product of a specific constellation; they constitute the detritus of all social strata that have lost their former social identity and emotional bearings as a result of abrupt political, geopolitical and economic dislocation  –​the same conditions that Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons said produce anomie (a term Arendt assiduously avoids). In continental Europe, masses in this sense emerged in one of two ways. In the first manifestation they were a consequence of the turmoil that followed World War I: revolution, military defeat,

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economic depression, break-​up of empire, foundation of new ethnically based states, the resultant displacement of those now deemed aliens. This pattern was evident in most parts of central Eastern and Western Europe. Social calamity smashed much of the class system. In its place arrived a “new terrifying negative solidarity” –​a “structureless mass of furious individuals” –​comprised of completely superfluous people:  unemployed workers, dispossessed small businessmen and “former members of the middle and upper classes” (315). Common to all was an undiluted sense of bitterness, betrayal and a loathing of status quo parties –​especially those that had previously claimed to represent them. In Germany and Austria, Hitler took advantage of this crisis, mobilizing masses that had been politically disenfranchised and economically emasculated in the interwar years, and organizing them into movements. The masses furnished the social basis of the Nazi dictatorship and, after 1940, the totalitarian regime. But the point to emphasize is that they preceded totalitarian rule. In the lands dominated by Bolshevism, conversely, masses were principally the artifact of a deliberate policy contrived by Stalin that aimed at pulverizing all groups and factions that were independent of the state. Arendt contends that Lenin, fearful of the inchoate nature of Soviet society, deliberately sought to foster stratification by multiplying interests and identities based, for instance, on independent trade unions, councils and nationalities. Stalin, by contrast, was intent on radically reversing this process. He wished to “fabricate an atomized and structureless mass” (319) the better to dominate society as a whole. To do this he set about liquidating property owners, independent peasants, trade unions and councils, and purging the military and bureaucracy, including factory managers and engineers. All “nonpolitical communal bonds” (322) were similarly severed by a reign of terror that encouraged denunciation and the cutting of friendship and family ties. Instead of a totalitarian movement organizing the masses, as in Germany, the totalitarian state in Russia created them. Although Arendt claims that Hitler and Stalin are mass leaders and as such “outside the class and national system of respectable European society” (327), she locates their first home squarely in the mob, the transgressive, criminal or semi-​criminal fringe of society. Hitler’s early adult years read like a history of dashed ambition and marginality; temperamentally an outsider, he helped shape a party “almost exclusively composed of misfits, failures and adventurers.” Stalin, too, was accustomed to living in society’s shadows, a human node of “the conspiracy apparatus of the [prerevolutionary] Bolshevik party” (317). Failure “in professional and social life, perversion and disaster in private life” (327), far from disqualifying Stalin and Hitler from mass leadership, only added luster to their appeal, for such men appeared to be heralds of a broader

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catastrophic destiny, ready to sacrifice everything to the cause of the movement (327). Still, for all their indubitable mass traits, the rulers of National Socialism and Bolshevism were also anomalous. Hitler and Stalin were older than the masses they incarnated and were not originally of mass stock. What, then, might a bona fide mass leader look like, a leader actually incubated by the masses rather than simply articulated to them via the underworld? Such a person was more likely to resemble “the stubborn dullness of Molotov” than the “hysterical fanaticism of Hitler” or the “sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin” (327). Heinrich Himmler –​“the most powerful man in Germany after 1936” (337–​38)  –​is for Arendt the representative mass figure:  “meticulous, calculated” and correct (327). Himmler was not a bohemian like Goebbels, or a sex criminal like Streicher, or a fanatic like Hitler, or an adventurer like Goering. He proved his supreme ability for organizing the masses into total domination by assuming that most people are neither bohemians, fanatics, adventurers, sex maniacs, crackpots, nor social failures, but first and foremost job holders and good family men. … The mass man whom Himmler organized for the greatest mass crimes ever committed in history bore the features of the philistine rather than of the mob man, and was the bourgeois who in the midst of the ruins of his world worried about nothing so much as his private security, was ready to sacrifice everything –​belief, honor, dignity –​on the slightest provocation. Nothing proved easier to destroy than the privacy and private morality of people who thought of nothing but safeguarding their private  lives. (338; see also Arendt [1945a] 1994, 128 for an earlier version of this formulation)

The remark that Heinrich Himmler was “the most powerful man in Germany after 1936” appears to sit uncomfortably with Arendt’s insistence that, in Germany, Hitler was the supreme leader. Her point, however, is not that Himmler was a more important figure than Hitler, whose skills I turn to next. It is that Himmler was the chief practical organizer of the regime’s “changing nuclei of militancy” (370), the pivot of constantly expanding radicalism that oversaw the Einsatzgruppen (the mobile killing squads that followed the Wehrmacht into occupied foreign lands), the SS in its many, ever more extreme, iterations (Death’s Head units, Waffen-​SS, Security Service) and the death camps.4 Yet Arendt is emphatic that “it was Hitler himself –​and not Himmler, or Bormann, or Goebbels  –​who always initiated more ‘radical’ measures; that they were always more radical than the proposals made by his immediate environment; that even Himmler was appalled when he was entrusted with the ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question –​all this has now been proved by innumerable documents” (375, fn. 89).

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Fascination without Charisma In advancing her theory of totalitarian leadership, Arendt pointedly departs from a number of then-​current interpretations of Bolshevism and National Socialism. These accounts, she believed, were mistaken in a general sense (they harked back analogically to past regimes –​autocracies, dictatorships, tyrannies and so forth –​and were thus disabled from registering the true novelty of totalitarian leadership) and in a host of particular ones. It is erroneous, for instance, to portray Hitler and Stalin as motivated by raison d’état (321). Pursuit of the national interest, in the tradition of Richelieu and Metternich, supposes rational aims and bounded commitments –​to the nation to which the state is devoted. In contrast, totalitarian rulers are recklessly contemptuous of limits, national or otherwise. Their ambition is global rule –​not of a state, but of a movement. To that end, the security of the rulers’ own nations must be gambled in permanent strife, their economies frequently rendered dysfunctional as ideological imperatives undermine instrumental rationality, and millions of the rulers’ own nation-​state citizens purged, executed, starved, deported, enslaved and killed in combat. Our bewilderment about the anti-​utilitarian character of the totalitarian state structure springs from the mistaken notion that we are dealing with a normal state after all –​a bureaucracy, a tyranny, a dictatorship –​from our overlooking the emphatic assertions by totalitarian rulers that they consider the country where they happened to seize power only the temporary headquarters of the international movement on the road to world conquest, that they reckon victories and defeats in terms of centuries or millennia, and that the global interests always overrule the local interests of their own territory. … What strikes the outside observer as “a piece of prodigious insanity” is nothing but the consequence of the absolute primacy of the movement not only over the state, but also over the nation, the people and the positions of power held by the rulers themselves. (411–​12)

Nor is it accurate to imagine that totalitarian leaders burn with the lust for power as that vice has traditionally been conceived. It is not groveling obeisance that totalitarian leaders crave, nor are they satisfied with monopolizing the machinery of state.5 Totalitarian leaders seek to dominate “human beings from within” (325), a thoroughly penetrative kind of domination realized through the terror they unleash and the ideology they orchestrate. The so-​called Leader Principle is another mistaken label for totalitarian leaders. While totalitarianism is not the rule of a clique or a gang (407), and while the leader’s dominion is uncontested (405), the Leader Principle is not, of itself, a

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totalitarian concept but rather an authoritarian one that has, somewhat misleadingly, been rhetorically borrowed by the Nazi movement. Strictly speaking, a Leader Principle suggests hierarchy and authority. Hierarchy implies that authority seeps down from the top to the bottom through a series of graduated layers of delegation and responsibility. Authority supposes restraints on both leaders and led. When combined, hierarchy and authority regularize and stabilize the arrangements to which they apply. But that is exactly what totalitarianism resists: stabilization would calm the typhoon movement that drives totalitarianism ever onward and outward. These standard interpretations of totalitarian leadership err by being broad-​brushed and anachronistic. They are easily dispatched. Arendt saved special effort, however, to refute a more stubborn academic attribution that derived, at least circuitously, from sociology:  the claim that one of the two totalitarian leaders, Adolf Hitler, resembled a charismatic leader. While the term charisma has an ancient lineage, and originally carried a pronounced religious stamp, in Arendt’s day as in ours it was pivotally associated with the work of Max Weber (notably, [1922] 1978). Arendt specifically recoiled from applying Weber’s account of charisma to either Hitler or Stalin, yet she offered a theory of leadership that is arguably more searchingly sociological, and more sociologically nuanced, than Weber’s own. His celebrated pure type of charisma was designed to fit a thousand instances: military, religious, political and artistic. A  concept with an eagle’s perspective, it is a triumph of historically informed abstraction. Yet note how little it tells us about any one case. Arendt’s optic was more focused. Suspicious of a term –​charisma –​ that invited so many heterogeneous uses, Arendt stressed the unprecedented character of totalitarian leadership. Only two cases had so far appeared.6 Her job was carefully to delineate them, not use either or both as a platform for a global theory of leadership. In order to understand the peculiarities of Arendt’s contrastive argument, it helps to recall the basic components of charisma as Weber depicts it. Pure or “genuine” charisma, Weber says, is doubly extraordinary: its bearer is “treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities” ([1922] 1978, 241); its life-​blood, at least initially, is a psychological condition of human excitement, enthusiasm or distress that may or may not be related to a wider social crisis. In the intense personal devotion to the master that it inspires, and its irreverence for tradition and legality for their own sake, “charismatic belief revolutionizes men ‘from within’ and shapes material and social conditions according to its revolutionary will” (1978, 1116). Nonetheless, the fealty of both close associates and the rank-​and-​file is neither unconditional nor uncritical. The leader must bring forth the requisite material and emotional satisfactions to keep the following

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committed to his mission. Charisma, to retain its spell over heart and mind, must continually display its powers. Should triumphs succumb to disaster and the promised well-​being for all believers fail to materialize, the leader will find himself deserted, ridiculed and, worst of all, ordinary. In the final analysis, therefore, the charismatic figure is the captive of others’ devotion. When that devotion turns to indifference or hostility, the gift of grace vaporizes (1978, 242, 1114). Though the ability to perform miracles of various kinds is, thus, a condition of charisma’s longevity, it is not the ground of its claim to legitimacy. This rests upon the “conception that it is the duty of those subject to charismatic authority to recognize its genuineness and to act accordingly.” It is this moral imperative, this demand of allegiance on behalf of a leader convinced that he or she is the vessel of some deity or of providence, that constitutes charisma’s “authoritarian principle” of legitimacy (Weber 1978, 242, 266). By contrast, plebiszitäre Herrschaft (Caesarism, Bonapartism, etc.) reflects a situation in which charisma has strayed such a long way down the road of rationalization that the premises of its original claim to legitimacy have been inverted; in short, charismatic legitimacy is subjected “to an anti-​authoritarian interpretation” (1978, 266). Instead of the leader’s authority being founded upon a mission which the following, to the extent that it recognizes him, is duty-​bound to acknowledge (charisma in its purest revelation), legitimacy is now formally derived from the will of the following itself, whom the charismatic (political) leader professes to embody. Legitimacy in this way assumes a democratic coloration. Superficially, two Weberian themes reemerge in Arendt’s discussion of totalitarian leadership: irreverence toward tradition and positive legality; the leader’s providential mission and revolutionary will.7 But the precise meaning Arendt gives to these properties, and the manner in which she articulates them, bears no substantive relevance to Weber’s theory. As I have shown elsewhere (Baehr 2001), Arendt’s political thought was anti-​Weberian in all relevant respects. To avoid offending the adored Karl Jaspers, for whom Weber was in turn a hallowed figure, Arendt kept her public disagreements with the latter in check. It is thus entirely in character that, when Arendt turns her guns on charisma as an explanatory concept, Weber entirely escapes her cannonade. Instead it is the unfortunate Hans Gerth (1940), sociologist and former student of Karl Mannheim, whom she attacks (361–​63, n.57; [1951–​52] 1994, 388). Arendt equally detested the stated or implied attribution of charisma to Hitler that was becoming fashionable in postwar Germany and evidenced in historian Gerhard Ritter’s introduction to Hitler’s Table Talk (Picker and Ritter 1951). It was not only that such usage came with an odor of apologetics, as if Hitler’s charisma might help explain the credulity of his listeners. It was also that the lens of charisma distorted a clear-​sighted appraisal of the

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peculiar make-​up of Hitler’s entourage. What alternative account, then, did Arendt offer? In Arendt’s long review of Hitler’s Table Talk ([1951–​52] 1994), and, more succinctly, in a footnote to Origins, she acknowledges Hitler’s “brilliant gifts as a mass orator,” while noting that Stalin, by contrast, who lacked such gifts, was “able to defeat the greatest orator of the Russian Revolution,” namely, Leon Trotsky (361). Now, it is in face-​to-​face encounters that witnesses have most often described the allure of Hitler’s personality.8 Arendt was unimpressed. Fascination is a tautological concept. People are fascinated by people who are fascinating. The secret to Hitler’s fascination, she responded, lay not in some ineffable, captivating quality, some “magical spell” that floored all listeners, robbing them of independent thought. Hitler’s appeal was rooted in something far more mundane: the social propensities of the audience to which he spoke. Her argument is thoroughly sociological. “Fascination is a social phenomenon, and the fascination Hitler exercised over his environment must be understood in terms of the particular company he kept” (305, fn. 1). On her account, Hitler’s entourage consisted of people whose capacity for discriminating judgment was all but obliterated. They had succumbed to the “chaos of opinions” that characterized the cynical and iconoclastic interwar years. But where others were indecisive and confused, Hitler was unwavering and clear, an obelisk of iron protruding from a trampled field of corn. Accordingly, The problem of Hitler’s charisma is relatively easy to solve. It was to a great extent identical with what Professor Ritter calls the “fanatical faith the man had in himself,” and it rested on the well-​known experiential fact that Hitler must have realized early in his life, namely, that modern society in its desperate inability to form judgments will take every individual for what he considers himself and professes himself to be and will judge him on that basis. Extraordinary self-​confidence and displays of self-​confidence therefore inspire confidence in others; pretensions of genius waken the conviction in others that they are indeed dealing with a genius. ([1951–​52] 1994, 291–​92)

Two features in particular gave Hitler a stature that in other times and among other people would have been derided as dangerous nonsense. The first was his “apodictic tone,” convictions uttered with the utmost dogmatism. Hitler knew firsthand, Arendt explains, the maelstrom of opinions to which modern people are subject and that make them hunger for certainty. Hitler understood that “a role consistently played is unquestioningly accepted as the substance itself ” ([1951–​52] 1994, 292). Second, he formulated this role in a form, logical consistency, which was literally compelling. Indeed, if “logic is defined as

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the capability to press on to conclusions with a total disregard for all reality and all experience, then Hitler’s greatest gift –​the gift to which he owed his success and which brought about his downfall –​was one of pure logic” ([1951–​52] 1994, 292–​93). I shall return in a later section to the perverted logicality of totalitarian rulers. For the moment, however, it is worth noting the multiple divergences between Arendt’s sociological analysis of fascination and Weberian or Weberian-​inspired interpretations of charismatic domination. Whereas charismatic leaders, obsessed with their own destiny, see a difference in kind between themselves and those who serve them, totalitarian leaders take full responsibility for the actions of their minions. And in contrast to Weber’s theory of charisma, where the leaders’ aura depends on the personal proofs they offer –​miracles, military victories –​and that demonstrate their unique qualities as saviors, Arendt argues that the credibility of totalitarian rulers hinges essentially on the organization they lead. So long as that organization is intact, the leaders are beyond reproach (387–​88). The gift they flourish, moreover, is not the grace of religious, artistic or military illuminati but the gift of pure logic, a world view of “seamless coherence.” The leaders’ platform of rule rests not on legitimacy but on the absurdity of a “fictitious world.” Totalitarian rulers are not exceptional individuals who announce a new message to the world and who emotionally transform those whose lives they touch. On the contrary, nothing “is more characteristic of totalitarian movements in general and of the quality of the fame of their leaders in particular than the startling swiftness with which they are forgotten and the startling ease with which they can be replaced” (305). Even Arendt’s use of language signals her distance from Weber. When Weber invokes charismatic Herrschaft, he typically means a specific kind of rulership; he also writes, more sparingly, of charismatic authority.9 For Arendt, “totalitarian authority” is a contradiction in terms, while Herrschaft –​a term she uses in the title of the German edition of Origins –​ is meant with all the brutish coercive hardness with which domination is generally associated today. Finally, totalitarian leadership offers no pathway to what Weber described as routinization: the transmission of the charismatic patina to durable institutions such as the papacy or royalty. As already indicated, routinization would negate the radically dynamic nature of the movement the leader leads. It would create not a diluted or sublimated totalitarianism but an entirely different kind of regime type. Hans Gerth is hence plainly wrong, Arendt ([1951d] 1994) insists, to portray National Socialism as a combination of bureaucracy and charisma, types of authority that for Weber pull in opposite directions. The problem with Gerth’s formulation (1940) is not its oxymoronic infidelity to Weber. It is that he and other sociologists are tone deaf when they apply to both Hitler and

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Jesus of Nazareth the same concept. Used in this way, a sociological hammer –​charisma in this case –​flattens the vital differences between a religious figure such as the Christ who offers a dispensation of love in which all people are children of God, and a maniacal demagogue like Hitler who seeks to dominate the whole globe and liquidate categories of people stigmatized as aliens. Sociologists, Arendt thought, appear to have been contaminated by the more general loss of discriminating judgment, nailing to diverse groups of people the same idea and thereby failing to identify human specificity. It is a big claim and, for my purposes, it can be left as such. More intriguing is that against all protestations to the contrary, Arendt falls back repeatedly on sociological kinds of reasoning even as she criticizes sociologists. The leader, on her account, is a distillation, a personification, of the masses. Fascination is a property of the group, not the individual. And the leader plays a role in an organization. What else are these contentions if they are not sociological?

What Do Totalitarian Leaders Do? My summary of Arendt has, to this point, emphasized her argument that the leader is a vector of the masses. But she also states repeatedly that totalitarian leaders are actors and that their actions are vital to the movements they lead. Stalin, we saw, actually created the masses by destroying all solid social groupings. He “changed the old political and especially revolutionary belief expressed popularly in the proverb ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’ into a veritable dogma:  ‘You can’t break eggs without making an omelette’ (Arendt [1950a] 1994, 275–​76). Hitler, too, was a gifted creator of organizations and ideological fictions. And both men were the chief experimenters of the movements they led, responsible for “hideous discoveries in the realm of the possible” (436), in particular, the discovery that human spontaneity can, under certain conditions, be expunged. Totalitarian leaders, furthermore, ensure that “no reliable statistics, no controllable facts and figures are ever published” so as to disorient those whose common sense disinclines them to believe “the monstrous” realities of the concentration and death camps (436). If the will is a spring of action, Stalin and Hitler were supremely willful beings. Unlike law, which is an artifact of civilization that defines what is permissible and that establishes procedures and boundaries, the will is a human faculty that is essentially mercurial –​except that its one constant exertion in the totalitarian case is toward global domination. “What could be more limitless than a man’s will, and more arbitrary than an order justified by nothing but the ‘I will’?” Arendt asked ([1966a] 2003, 244). “In the language of the Nazis, the never-​resting, dynamic ‘will of the Führer’ –​and not his orders, a phrase that might imply a fixed and circumscribed authority –​becomes the

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‘supreme law’ in a totalitarian state” (365; Arendt is quoting from Nazi documents). Equally, “the will of the Führer can be embodied everywhere and at all times, and he himself is not tied to any hierarchy, not even the one he might have established himself ” (405). It is their “simple minded purposefulness” and “stubbornness” that moves Hitler and Stalin to “choose those elements from existing ideologies which are best fitted to become the fundaments of another, entirely fictitious world,” the world of the Trotskyite conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (362). In one of the few concessions that Origins makes to received opinion, Arendt grants that Stalin and Hitler are the preeminent totalitarian leaders. She also notes their admiration for each other. “The only man for whom Hitler had ‘unqualified respect’ was ‘Stalin the genius’ [citing Hitler’s Table Talk], while we know from Khrushchev’s speech to the Twentieth Party Congress ‘that Stalin trusted only one man and that was Hitler’ (309–​10). Stalin’s attack on Jewish “cosmopolitanism,” unleashed in the last years of his life, was yet one more tribute to the memory of his Nazi foe (xl). The depraved qualities of the Führer and Stalin are similarly taken for granted by Arendt. They are responsible for inverting the most essential imperatives of Western ethics. “For just as Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ actually meant to make the command ‘Thou shalt kill’ binding for the elite of the Nazi party, Stalin’s pronouncement [a reference to the denunciations of the Great Purge of 1936–​37] prescribed: ‘Thou shalt bear false testimony,’ as a guiding rule for the conduct of all members of the Bolshevik party” (xxxiii). Radically evil these men certainly are. But as makers and shapers of movements they exemplify something approaching genius. Consider their more prominent achievements. Both manage to divest themselves of the constraints of party programs so as to release their radicalism from doctrinal impediments (324). Both are innovators: “Perhaps it was Stalin who was the first to discover all the potentiality for rule that the police possessed; it certainly was Hitler who, shrewder than Schoenerer, his spiritual father, knew how to use the hierarchical principle of racism, how to exploit the anti-​Semitic assertion of the existence of a ‘worst’ people in order properly to organize the ‘best’ and all the conquered and oppressed in between, how to generalize the superiority complex of the pan-​movements so that each people, with the necessary exception of the Jews, could look down upon one that was even worse off than itself ” (241). Both enjoy “the confidence of the masses” until the very end of their rule (306) and are willing to identify themselves fully with their agents: The supreme task of the Leader is to impersonate the double function characteristic of each layer of the movement –​to act as the magic defense of the

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movement against the outside world; and at the same time, to be the direct bridge by which the movement is connected with it. The Leader represents the movement in a way totally different from all ordinary party leaders; he claims personal responsibility for every action, deed, or misdeed, committed by any member or functionary in his official capacity. This total responsibility is the most important organizational aspect of the so-​called Leader principle, according to which every functionary is not only appointed by the Leader but is his walking embodiment, and every order is supposed to emanate from this one ever-​present source. (374)

Hitler and Stalin also command the utmost allegiance from their entourage. The highest functionaries  –​the “policy-​makers” (386)  –​unlike those more distant from the epicenter of rule, are loyal not because they believe the leader to be personally omniscient and incapable of mistakes, another divergence from the grounds of charismatic authority. Nor does the elite swallow much of the propagandistic bilge that the masses imbibe. The rulers’ closest associates are faithful because, rather than being stupefied by the leaders’ extraordinary qualities, they are in awe of their de facto dominance. “The point of their [the associates’] loyalty is not that they believe the Leader is infallible, but that they are convinced that everybody who commands the instruments of violence with the superior methods of totalitarian organization can become infallible” (388). And that assurance is itself related to another idea: “a firm and sincere belief in human omnipotence. [The associates’] moral cynicism, their belief that everything is permitted, rests on the solid conviction that everything is possible” (387). Arendt was acutely sensitive to the rhetorical, or what she calls the stylistic, features of totalitarianism. The role of oratory –​brilliant in Hitler’s case, leaden in Stalin’s –​is twofold: it constructs an “entirely fictitious world” –​the world Jewish conspiracy, the Trotskyite plot –​that provides the masses with ideological points of reference; and it confuses the non-​totalitarian world into thinking that totalitarian leaders are demagogues pure and simple, thus dramatically underestimating their menacing novelty. Granted, those who lead the movement are opportunists. They are willing shamelessly to harness popular causes such as national grandeur or dilate gravely on socialism in one country, while actually pursuing world domination and what the hated Leon Trotsky accurately described as a “permanent revolution” (317). Stalin and Hitler are skilled liars, purveyors of fantastical conspiracy theories, and able to weld “the masses into a collective unit” with “impressive magnificence” (333). The rulers understand better than anyone “the terrible, demoralizing fascination” with which “monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts” (333). The rulers’

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art consists in using, and at the same time transcending, the elements of reality, of verifiable experiences, in the chosen fiction, and in generalizing them into regions which then are definitely removed from all possible control by individual experience. With such generalizations, totalitarian propaganda establishes a world fit to compete with the real one, whose main handicap is that it is not logical, consistent and organized. (362)

The capacity to divine the course of history and nature, Arendt believes, lies at the heart of the claim that totalitarian leaders are infallible. All setbacks and zigzags to the contrary, the “Leader is always right in his actions” (383), unbending in certitude, and unwilling to concede mistakes on any matter of importance. This is because all apparent defeats are in fact part of a grander process, temporary milestones on the way to historical triumph –​a triumph rendered necessary and intelligible once one locates the key to the mysteries of the world. The leaders’ “language of prophetic scientificality” corresponds, in turn, to the needs of the masses, people “who had lost their home in the world and now were prepared to be reintegrated into eternal, all-​dominating forces which by themselves would bear man, the swimmer on the waves of adversity, to the shores of safety” (351). Moreover, totalitarian leaders do not have to wait for events “to make their predictions come true” (349). They understand that reality itself can be fabricated to realize these predictions. In their conception, a fact is not a datum that is independently true; it is an episode that can be made true with sufficient power to make it so. Hence, just as the assertion that the bourgeoisie is a dying class is made true by liquidating its members, so the claim that Jews are sub-​normal is demonstrated by creating death camp conditions of terror, starvation and disorganization that break their solidarity and reduce them to the status of tortured beasts (349–​50).

Mechanisms of Movement Previous sections identified a number of abilities that totalitarian leaders possess, always understood by Arendt as related to the nature of the masses and the movement –​the body that organizes the masses and makes them fit totalitarian subjects. One last attribute of totalitarian leaders is left to explore, and Arendt leaves us in no doubt that it is the most important. It concerns the leader’s role as totalitarian dynamo, the person more responsible than anyone else for initiating change, ensuring that the movement keeps pressing forward with violent storm force, uprooting the ramparts of civilization as if they were no more than flimsy garden trellises. Totalitarianism contained a (mass) movement, and it was itself a movement. Stalin and Hitler’s “idea of domination was something that no state and no mere apparatus of violence can ever

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achieve, but only a movement that is constantly kept in motion: namely, the permanent domination of each individual in each and every sphere of life” (326). Or as she put it elsewhere: “One should not forget that only a building can have a structure, but that a movement … can have only a direction, and that any form of legal or governmental structure can be only a handicap to a movement which is being propelled with increasing speed in a certain direction” (398). Many scholars have noted Arendt’s dislike of physical cause and effect models as applied to human conduct. Structural models of generative mechanisms, so beloved by modern “realist” theorists of social science, repulsed her equally. When tempted to invoke naturalist analogies, she preferred the image of chemical elements crystallizing to form new phenomena, hence her depiction of totalitarianism as emerging out of a number of elements such as imperialism, racism and anti-​Semitism. On occasions, she reached for organic comparisons, likening totalitarian organization to an onion (413, 430), to a virus (306), and the totalitarian leader to a “living organization” (361, 362, 386; the term is taken directly from Mein Kampf); or she summoned meteorology:  totalitarianism is akin to a devastating desert sandstorm (478) encompassing the earth, drawing force from the “organized loneliness” of mass societies.10 There are, however, two very large exceptions to Arendt’s hostility to physical analogies. The first is her ubiquitous reference to the state or administrative “machine”; a check using my Kindle e-​reader yields 60 uses of “machine” or “machinery” in Origins. The other exception is the language she employs to make sense of the ferocious, unceasing interventions of totalitarian leaders. Here is a notable statement: In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it into motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his “intangible preponderance” [referring to a passage in Boris Souvarine’s book on Stalin]. (373)

Aside from yet another departure from charisma in its Weberian formulation –​ the totalitarian leaders’ appeal derives from the inner circle rather than from the leaders’ personalities –​Arendt asks us to consider two ideas: the leader, perhaps rather like the eye of a hurricane, is at the center of the movement, not above it; and he is like a motor:  “The machine that generates, organizes, and spreads the monstrous falsehoods of totalitarian movements depends again upon the position of the Leader,” a man who uniquely understands the laws of race or history and whose prognostications –​couched in centuries or millennia –​can never be disproved by facts (383). The “real role” of leaders,

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she says, is “to drive the movement forward at any price and if anything to step up its speed” (375, fn. 89). Hannah Arendt did not drive an automobile, and it is hard to imagine her, oil-​streaked and dungaree-​dressed, poring over the entrails of an internal combustion engine in the pit of an auto mechanic’s shop. But the motor image she invokes suggests something like an engine’s drive-​shaft, which Wikipedia defines as a “mechanical component for transmitting torque and rotation, usually used to connect other components of a drive train that cannot be connected directly.”11 Perhaps if she had lived in the Internet age, Arendt might have compared the leader to a modem or a router or an Ethernet hub. But the physical simile was the one she employed, comparing on several occasions (408, 409, 418, 421) totalitarian rule to a “transmission belt” (she takes the term from Isaac Deutscher). “Through the net of secret agents,” writes Arendt, “the totalitarian ruler has created for himself a directly executive transmission belt which, in distinction to the onion-​like structure of the ostensible hierarchy, is completely severed and isolated from all other institutions” (43). Ultimately, we can best grasp what Arendt means not by overanalyzing her similes but by identifying what she strove to convey by them. And this becomes evident if we look at the springs of movement, the propulsive energy, that she imputes specifically and exclusively to totalitarian leaders. These mechanisms of motion are plentiful. Rather than the inspired message brought by charismatic figures, they are the totalitarian leader’s singular contribution to the society he dominates. Among the most cited mechanism is the regular, sanguinary practice of the party purge. By it, Stalin ensured after 1934 that the regime remained constantly in flux. The purge is a device intended to secure permanent instability. Purges impede the establishment of settled routines, explode the principle of seniority, sever bonds of loyalty and solidarity among colleagues, create a profusion of new jobs, offer opportunities of rapid advancement for party members in lower rungs of the administration, and cement the dependence of all employees on the leader (323, 390, 431–​32). The Nazi counterpart to the purge, after the dispatch of Ernst Röhm, is “the notion of racial ‘selection which can never stand still’ [Arendt quotes Heinrich Himmler],” and which requires “a constant radicalization of the standards by which the selection, i.e. the extermination of the unfit, is carried out” (391). Early Reich records show that the extermination of full Jews was to be followed by half and one-​quarter Jews, the termination of the insane to be followed by that of the incurably sick, and, such principles of selection were extended to a host of foreign nations and ethnicities deemed less pure than the Aryan race. Another mechanism of movement is the multiplication of offices and the programmed competition between and among them. Both National Socialism

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and Bolshevism spawned scores of organizations that duplicated and re-​ duplicated the functions of each of their organs. The Nazi regime had two organizations for students, another two for women, another two for lawyers, professors, physicians and so on. In the Soviet Union, the state, party and NKVD apparatuses all had their own independent departments of economics, education, culture and military affairs, and the NKVD, the security apparatus, secreted its own “special department” that functioned as an NKVD within the NKVD (401–​403). “Technically speaking,” says Arendt, “the movement within the apparatus of totalitarian domination derives its mobility from the fact that the leadership constantly shifts the actual center of power, often to other organizations, but without dissolving or even publicly exposing the groups that have thus been deprived of their power” (400). All these shadow organizations believe they embody “the will of the Leader” because none of them is deprived of its existence, even as another set of organizations sprouts alongside, “a game which obviously could go on forever.” But the leader’s will is “unstable” and often secret. The only rule of thumb totalitarian subjects can reliably follow is that, under conditions of “planned shapelessness,” power is inversely related to the visibility of organizations (400–​401). As for the leaders, they are engaged in an unending double task. On one hand, they must establish the fictitious world of conspiracy and millennial ambition; this is a hallmark of totalitarian movements. On the other, they must prevent this new world from developing a new stability; for a stabilization of its laws and institutions would surely liquidate the movement and with it the hope for eventual world conquest. The totalitarian ruler must, at any price, prevent normalization from reaching the point where a new way of life could develop –​ one which might, after a time, lose its bastard qualities and take its place among the widely differing and profoundly contrasting ways of life of the nations of the earth. The moment the revolutionary institutions became a national way of life … totalitarianism would lose its “total” quality and become subject to the law of the nations, according to which each possesses a specific territory, people, and historical tradition which relates it to other nations –​a plurality which ipso facto refutes every contention that any specific form of government is absolutely valid. (391)

The purge and the principle of the competitive duplication of offices, we have seen, are two springs of motion. The third is an imputation of enmity and, with it, a judicial concept, which explodes all normal standards of positive law. Secret police, Arendt observes, are a mainstay of all despotic regimes. Their job is to track down and neutralize “suspects,” people with dangerous thoughts and objectives. But the secret police of totalitarian regimes do not pursue

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suspects; the Gestapo and NKVD have a different quarry: the “possible crime” of the “objective enemy.” Objective enemies are those who are innocent of any crime other than their existence. They are Jews, gypsies, landlords, priests, indeed any group the regime has targeted for destruction. They stand convicted for what they are and what they might do as carriers of tendencies. And their identity, or rather their identification, is constantly changing. Foreseeing the extermination of the Jews, the Nazis started preparing for the liquidation of the Polish people and of certain categories of Germans. The Bolsheviks graduated from the descendants of the ruling classes to the kulaks, Russians of Polish origin (between 1936 and 1938), the “Tartars and the Volga Germans during the war, former prisoners of war and units of the occupational forces of the Red Army, and Russian Jewry after the establishment of the Jewish state” (424). Deprived of a standard tool of despotic regimes –​the provocation –​the secret police in a totalitarian state have lost much of their power. It no longer falls to them to hunt down malcontents or goad individuals into attacking the regime. Their job is restricted to capture and execution. Exactly which protean foe stands next to be dispatched is a decision exclusively for the totalitarian leader as circumstances suggest it. “The totalitarian police … is totally subject to the will of the Leader, who alone can decide who the next potential enemy will be and who, as Stalin did, can also single out cadres of the secret police for liquidation,” as occurred during the Moscow Trials of the 1930s. And this initiative, in turn, “corresponds exactly to the factual situation reiterated time and again by totalitarian rulers: namely, that their regime is not a government in any traditional sense, but a movement, whose advance constantly meets with new obstacles that have to be eliminated” (424–​25; italics in the original). A final mechanism of movement, of which leaders are the spring, is discussed most fully in “Ideology and Terror,” an essay attached to the second and all succeeding editions and printings of Origins.12 This develops an argument encountered embryonically in Arendt’s analysis of fascination. Arendt claimed that Hitler and Stalin were ideological pioneers; only with their emergence “were the great potentialities of ideologies discovered” (468):  recourse to “stringent logicality” was “exclusively” their work (472). It is not that Stalin or Hitler stumbled across some great or new idea. It is that they pressed the logic of ideologies to their furthest extreme. Ideologies in the totalitarian form are claims to total explanations not of “what is, but what becomes … They are in all cases concerned solely with the element of motion” (470), and they proceed independently of experience. Both leaders took pride in their “supreme gift” for “ice cold reasoning” (Hitler) and the “mercilessness of dialectics” (Stalin) “and proceeded to drive ideological implications into extremes of logical consistency.” For this reason alone, Hitler and Stalin

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must be considered ideologists of the greatest importance. What distinguished these new totalitarian ideologists from their predecessors was that it was no longer primarily the “idea” of the ideology  –​the struggle of classes and the exploitation of the workers or the struggle of races and the care for Germanic peoples –​which appealed to them, but the logical process which could be developed from it. According to Stalin, neither the idea nor the oratory but “the irresistible force of logic thoroughly overpowered [Lenin’s] audience.” The power, which Marx thought was born when the idea seized the masses, was discovered to reside, not in the idea itself, but in its logical process which “like a mighty tentacle seizes you on all sides as if in a vise and from whose grip you are powerless to tear yourself away; you must either surrender or make up your mind to utter defeat.” (471–​72)

The content of the ideology “is devoured by the logic with which the ‘idea’ is carried out.” Hence the logic of Bolshevism made workers lose rights they had held even under tsarism, and the logic of National Socialism helped destroy a huge number of Germans. The inherent logicality is shown in the “argument of which Hitler like Stalin was very fond: You can’t say A without saying B and C and so on down to the end of the murderous alphabet” (472).

Indispensable-Dispensable Leaders Perhaps the hardest part to grasp of Hannah Arendt’s discussion of totalitarian leaders is her account of what might be called their indispensable-dispensable function. Again and again, she scorns a view of them as uniquely, gifted, mesmerizing figures turned from the same clay as charismatic personalities. The leaders’ aura was utterly contrived. “The consistent and ever-​changing division between real secret authority and ostensible open representation made the actual seat of power a mystery by definition” (400). Totalitarian rulers are agents and impersonators –​isomorphs –​of the masses. They do not try to routinize their power because routinizing it would stabilize it, creating an entirely new and conservative regime. In apparent tension with that description, Arendt characterizes the rulers as absolute in their power,13 essential to the regimes they lead and, once installed, invulnerable to internal revolt, be it by the army or the secret police. How is one to reconcile these contrasting contentions? Arendt distinguishes two phases of the leaders’ career: the pre–​total power stage and a second stage in which the leaders are firmly entrenched at the center of their movements. In the first stage, the leader’s position within the intimate circle depends upon his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel. He

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owes his rise to leadership to an extreme ability to handle inner-​party struggles for power rather than to demagogic or bureaucratic-​organizational qualities. He is distinguished from earlier types of dictators in that he hardly wins through simple violence. Hitler needed neither the SA nor the SS to secure his position as leader of the Nazi movement; on the contrary, Röhm, the chief of the SA and able to count upon its loyalty to his own person, was one of Hitler’s inner-​ party enemies. Stalin won against Trotsky, who not only had a far greater mass appeal but, as chief of the Red Army, held in his hands the greatest power potential in Soviet Russia at the time. Not Stalin, but Trotsky, moreover, was the greatest organizational talent, the ablest bureaucrat of the Russian Revolution. On the other hand, both Hitler and Stalin were masters of detail and devoted themselves in the early stages of their careers almost entirely to questions of personnel, so that after a few years hardly any man of importance remained who did not owe his position to them. (373–​74)

While the leader is vulnerable in the first stage, his position is impregnable in the second. Stalin and Hitler maintained their ascendancy through an unrivaled capacity for productive intrigue, the ability to shuffle personnel to maximize insecurity and skill in handling rivalries within the Party. But it is not these talents that are decisive in the second phase. The leader dominates his circle because of its “sincere and sensible conviction that without him everything would be immediately lost” (374). Everyone, including the entourage and ministries, knows that their temporary power has no independent basis of justification; it springs “directly from the Leader without the intervening levels of a functioning hierarchy” (405). It is the leader’s knowledge “of the labyrinth of transmission belts [that] equals supreme power” (408). Moreover, “the Leader is irreplaceable because the whole complicated structure would lose its raison d’être without his commands.” Naturally, the leader’s intimates know well enough his frailties. No talisman, the ruler “is needed, not as a person, but as a function” (387). Yet far from muting his importance to the movement’s highest ranks, the leader’s functional quality actually amplifies it. Comprehending “everything and everybody in terms of organization,” the totalitarian entourage appreciates that undermining the leader, or seeking to replace him through coups d’état, is tantamount to collective suicide (374). Concerted opposition is difficult, even if it were considered, because duplication of tasks and constant “removal, demotion, and promotion make reliable teamwork impossible and prevent the development of experience” (409). The leader takes it for granted that the organization will obey whoever succeeds him. Yet so long as he is alive he claims to be the embodiment of destiny (408), the one person who correctly interprets “the essentially reliable forces in history or nature, forces which neither defeat nor

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ruin can prove wrong because they are bound to assert themselves in the long run” (349). His removal or replacement, Arendt contends, would jeopardize the credence of the Great Lie, the fictitious, conspiratorial world the leader has enunciated and on which totalitarianism depends. Indeed, “systematic lying” is practiced “more consistently and on a larger scale” once the leader is installed in power (413).14 A palace revolution would also be an acknowledgment of error or precariousness; it would “break the spell of infallibility which surrounds the office of the Leader and spell doom to all those connected with the movement” (387). Collapse or major disturbance at the highest level would confront the whole fictitious edifice with “the factuality of the real world,” an event “which only the movement steered in an infallibly right direction by the Leader [is] able to ward off” (387). Of pivotal importance to the leader’s “absolute monopoly of power,” and the ultimate demonstration of it, is his relationship to the chief of police, epitomized by men such as Beria and Himmler (405–​6). Neither official ever challenged their leaders for supreme power. Neither one of them survived his leader’s fall. Himmler swallowed poison. Beria was shot by a Soviet general. While they were alive, both men were in command of formidable economic and coercive resources. Yet both were “totally subject to the will of the Leader” (425). It is the leader, not the police, who decides who the next “objective enemy” is to be. And because the enemy is “objective” –​a category chosen almost at random to enable the continuing radicalization of the movement-​ regime –​the traditional tools of the police in non-​totalitarian countries are redundant. Secret information has relatively little purchase because real plots are unlikely. More generally, the leader’s position as the One who can see into the future, the hermeneutician of Fate, makes him thoroughly indispensable (382–​83). So, too, does the fact that “the multiplicity of the transmission belts, the confusion of the hierarchy, secure the dictator’s complete independence of all his inferiors and make possible the swift and surprising changes in policy for which totalitarianism has become famous” (409). The reader who has come this far with me is likely to be perplexed by this section. It seems plainly hard to reconcile with at least some of the sections before it. Taken as a whole, Arendt’s analysis has almost a Zen quality. The leader looks to be everything and nothing, to have absolute power, yet a vessel of the masses, to be indispensable, but to provide no channel of routinization and quickly forgotten. What are we to conclude? At least two interpretive options are possible. One is to portray this oddity as evidence of Arendt’s confusion; she is contradicting herself. The other is to imagine she knew what she was saying, was aware of the puzzle I  just noted, and thought she had expressed herself well enough to have resolved it. Here the onus falls not on Arendt, but on us. That burden is not without precedent.

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In Romano Guardini’s The Lord (1954), believers are instructed that what the scriptures record Jesus Christ as saying, he did say and that he meant what he said. So that if Jesus talks about the “rewards” that God will provide the faithful for the good deeds they perform, it is rewards we must consider and understand, however strange that seems to Kantian and post-​Kantian ethical systems in which we are enjoined to do good for its own sake. If the Lord talks of rewards, Guardini argues, it is not because His standards are more primitive or naïve than ours. It is because modern people arrogantly assume they know better. For to “desire good for its own intrinsic dignity, and so purely that the pleasure of goodness is the sole and entirely satisfying motive behind our virtue –​this is something of which God alone is capable.” Jesus’s idea of reward “is a warning-​call to humility.”15 Great authors are not God or even gods. But we call authors great because of their interpretive fecundity and because they are greater than us. We may criticize their arguments. We may show they got their facts wrong. We may claim that their theses have been superseded by modern or revisionist scholarship. But when it comes to the coherence of an argument, its jigsaw nature, commentators are advised to be more circumspect. It could well be, as R. G. Collingwood ([1939] 1978:  28–​43) emphasized, that an alleged confusion in an author’s work is a result of our failing to understand the question it sought to answer. Arendt continually exposed the strangeness of totalitarian rule. Her genius was both to depict it free of meat-​grinding categories such as charisma, and to attempt a novel interpretation that could grasp totalitarianism’s paradoxes. The best I can do is to suggest the following, partial solution to the puzzle of leaders’ indispensable dispensability: It is not Leaders who are dispensable, but particular leaders. The Leader, whoever it is, is the hub of totalitarian movements. Particular leaders can be replaced. The role of Leader, however cannot be avoided without endangering the whole edifice of totalitarian rule. Nor can Leaders emerge or survive without the organization they embody and on which they depend. The Leader, masses and movement are intrinsically connected. This is at root a structural argument that invokes roles more than persons. It is, in other words, an argument that American functionalists of the 1940s and 1950s would have in principle found perfectly congruent with sociological explanation.

Hannah Arendt and Covert Sociology Arendt’s story of totalitarianism ends in 1953 with the death of Stalin,16 and that is where I  shall end too. She took comparatively little interest in post-​ Stalin conditions. Writing shortly after the Hungarian uprising in 1956, Arendt (1958c) contended that Khrushchev and his supporters showed few indications

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of relinquishing totalitarian domination or the mindset that accompanied it.17 She was, overall, pessimistic about Russia’s immediate prospects. In contrast, by 1966, when she wrote a new Preface to the third edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt was confident that the regime had evolved into a non-​ totalitarian system of one-​party dictatorship. It would be possible to use this chapter’s reenactment of Arendt’s theory of totalitarian rule to answer an obvious, but important, cluster of questions: How well does her theory match up to the accounts of regime witnesses and modern historians published after 1951? Do they sustain, modify or refute her theory? Is she more perspicacious about Hitler than Stalin or vice versa? Arendt herself believed that the work of Nadezhda Mandelstam (Hope Against Hope), Roy Medvedev (Let History Judge) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (In the First Circle) overwhelmingly supported her theory, and my own view is that she was broadly correct in this assertion ([1972] 2015). If one adds the novels of Vasily Grossman (Forever Flowing, Life and Fate), one sees even more reason to believe that she offered a compelling and accurate interpretation of the violent, motile, unmasking, fictitious world that is at the center of her account of totalitarian leaders. For Hitler, Arendt might do less well. The Gestapo was undermanned (Johnson 2000). The German population was not in a permanent state of fear for its own safety  –​except, later, when faced with aerial bombing and rampaging Russian troops. Anti-​Nazi comments were common (Klemperer [1995] 1999). Yet Arendt was also percipient. Ian Kershaw’s (2008, 320–​57) analysis of “working towards the Führer” is already anticipated in a quote that Arendt finds in Nuremberg documents to the effect that Hitler’s orders were “intentionally vague, and given in the expectation that their recipient would recognize the intent of the given order, and act accordingly” (399).18 Nonetheless, a critical reading of Arendt’s theory of leadership, still less an updating of her work, was not the objective of this chapter. My aims were different. First, I presented Arendt’s theory in as comprehensive and coherent form as I was able to muster. Second, I sought to show how an unforgiving critic of sociology depends on explanations that time and again have a sociological character, even as she comprehensively departs from Weberian theory. The point of this exercise was not to trip up Arendt. It was simply to show that a kind of sociological reasoning –​highly idiosyncratic and bracingly imaginative, to be sure –​is entailed in the structure of her argument. Arendt’s critique of a sociological concept, charisma, coined by a bona fide sociologist, camouflages this fact but does not negate it. Nor does Arendt hide her own sociological debts. In Origins of Totalitarianism, Simmel’s description of the secret society forms the bedrock of her own analysis of the initiation ceremonies, consistent lying, cult of leadership and conspiratorial fictions of totalitarian movements; on this Arendt is explicit (376, n. 91). More generally, the social appears

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in Origins as court society, the bourgeoisie, the mob and the masses. All, in Arendt’s construction, are socially real. All have effects on the polity. All can be analyzed in their own right. Leaders, in one crisp formulation, “represent” totalitarian movements; they play roles and carry out “functions,” acting as the “embodiment” of the organizations they serve (374). Moreover, if we date sociological thinking to the Scottish Enlightenment or to Montesquieu and de Tocqueville, as Raymond Aron (1965b) urged us to do, we will be persuaded that such thinking does not require a self-​conscious disciplinary signature.19 What, then, does sociological reasoning entail? Formally, a sociological account is one in which some aspect of human agency is attributed to the influence, pressure and facilitation of collective practices and resources, such as interaction rituals, modes of propaganda, sanctioned performances and linguistic codes.20 To the degree that the social, under any description of it, is shown to affect human conduct, one has in essence a sociological explanation. Using a language that was foreign to her own discursive idiom, we might say that Arendt’s category of “the social” is an explanandum, something to be explained by something else, namely, the collapse of antiquity and the emergence of the bureaucratic-​capitalist world. The social is, further, an explanans, that is, something –​a force, an antecedent condition, a mixture of elements –​that itself has explanatory import and of which other things are predicated:  conformism, the rule-​of-​nobody, the rise of a laboring society. A sociological account approaches competence when the social is clearly defined and a social theory is clearly articulated. A sociological account is potentially successful when the social is cogently demonstrated to entrain human agents, that is, channel, energize or impede their activities with regularized effects. Now, let us allow that Arendt’s manifold references to “the social” and “society” throughout her work (1958a, 1963g) are allusive rather than systematic (Pitkin 1998). This puts her sociological competence in question, but not her covert sociology as such. Often “society” and “the social” function merely as residual categories in Arendt’s explanations. Yet they and their cognates are also capable of assuming a constitutive form as they did in Origins. And if we take her work as a whole, we see that the terms society and the social variously designate market relationships, the sphere of necessity, a hybrid realm between the public and the private realms, high society and mass society. Arendt treats them as illusory in one context, potent in another, potent in their illusions in yet another. By turns, “the social” functions as a metaphor for thoughtless compliance and conformity, snobbishness and hierarchy, wilful introspection, a one-​dimensional identity, and a disassociated identity. The social is sometimes ontological and timeless, like Heidegger’s das Man, at other times historical and novel. As civil society it exists in contradistinction to the state yet also in alliance with it. Depending on Arendt’s argument, “the

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social” appears to be the stigma of inauthenticity, the ground of inauthenticity or the outcome of inauthenticity. Arendt’s discussion of Jewish assimilation employs categories –​notably, parvenu and pariah –​that are themselves modes of social status classification. More generally, Arendt’s Jewish writings throw a long sociological shadow. The Jews’ position, Arendt explains, is that of a distinctive stratum defined by its relationship to the state (bereft of citizenship) and by its social marginality. The Jewish parvenu is a member of an outgroup, belittled by internalizing the social standards of the oppressor, adapting to an alien world through “impression management.”21 Writing of the German Jews of the late Enlightenment, Arendt stated that they understood “that the past clung inexorably to them as a collective group; that they could only shake it off as individuals” –​in other words, that even escape required a sensitivity to their social conditioning ([1957] 1997, 106). Equally, she acknowledged, in social constructionist vein, that facts “have their own particular way of being true: their truth must always be recognized, testified to” ([1957] 1997, 92).22 Mostly, as one would expect from the above, “society” or “social” are invoked negatively, yet even this usage is by no means ubiquitous.23 Might we, though, distinguish a social explanation from a sociological one, and say that Arendt advanced only the former? That would leave her unsullied. But the distinction is as pedantic as it is dubious if only because sociology is the discipline par excellence of social things, social facts, social habits, social formations, social geometry, social interactions, social bonds and social relations. From Emile Durkheim to Florian Znaniecki to Robert Nisbet, sociologists have been the greatest explorers of the meaning of social phenomena. It is true that some sociologists today trumpet the death of society and hence the death of sociology as traditionally practiced, but this is and is likely to remain an exotic view. It also has no relevance for our discussion of Arendt because, as we have seen, she not only developed concepts of the social but also assigned to them conditioning vigor. And wherever society and “the social” are invoked as conditioning factors of human conduct, and wherever the actions of men and women are deemed influenced by rituals, ideologies and the myriad of groups to which they are attached  –​clubs, military and paramilitary units, secret societies, concentration camps and a thousand other human ensembles –​we are in the very heartland of sociological explanation. Only its type, scope, complexity and manner can be at issue. Is sociological explanation dissembled or explicit, supposed or demonstrated, plausible or fanciful, evidentiary or merely asserted? These are the stakes of a sociological account. In sum, the question is not whether Arendt resorted to sociological explanation in her writings –​given her subjects, she could hardly avoid one –​but how adequate it was. Philosophers, historians, human geographers, political theorists take note. You may not be interested in sociology, but sociology is

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implicated in your practice whenever you deal specifically with social formations and predicate on them reasons, motives and energies. Purists will be unsettled by Arendt’s covert sociology. Others may consider it doubly felicitous. Sociologists are able to read Arendt as a major thinker with whom they have something in common, and Arendt’s legacy has one more medium, and one new audience, through which to exert intellectual influence.

Notes 1 My focus is on Hitler and Stalin, the supreme rulers of their regimes, rather than the larger tier of ministerial heads and commanders that includes Molotov, Beria and Himmler (and Eichmann) and the military chiefs of staff. This focus accords with Arendt’s own usage. 2 To my knowledge, this chapter is only the second specific and sustained treatment of Arendt’s theory of totalitarian leadership. The other is by Margaret Canovan (2004). My discussion of the “masses” draws extensively on Baehr (2007). 3 To avoid the ungainly repetition of bibliographic details, all quotes from and references to Origins appear in parenthesis with relevant page numbers only. 4 Arendt also says that chief of police  –​Himmler and his Soviet equivalent, Beria  –​ occupy “the most powerful public positions” (405). 5 In her last public statement on Stalin, Arendt acknowledged Stalin’s desire to humiliate both his enemies and his own officials ([1972] 2015). 6 On Arendt’s ambivalent assessment of Maoist China, see Baehr (2010)). 7 Other aspects of charisma are comparable to Arendt’s claims about totalitarian leadership; for instance, both are characterized by personalized, ad hoc recruitment, and a nonchalance toward economic rationality. But it is just this kind of comparative, decontextualized cobbling that Arendt deplored. It subsitutes analogy for specificity. 8 When I interviewed Hitler’s architect and armaments minister, Albert Speer, in 1977, shortly after his release from Spandau Prison, he too spoke of Hitler’s “charisma.” 9 Sam Whimster, in email correspondence (22 November 2014), observes that aside from a few early fragments, Weber’s term “is always Herrschaft. I notice that in my [Whimster’s] translation of the ‘The three pure types of legitimate rule,’ I  vary the translation of Herrschaft to include power, authority and domination. Given the labile nature of charismatic gifts, domination is too strong, perhaps, though the charismatic leader is clearly a Beherrscher.” 10 The desert analogy also appears in Arendt (2005a, 202). “Both psychology, the discipline of adjusting human life to the desert, and totalitarian movements, the sandstorms in which false or pseudo-​action suddenly bursts forth from deathlike quiet, present imminent danger to the two faculties that patiently enable us to transform the desert rather than ourselves, the conjoined faculties of passion and action.” 11 http://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Drive_​shaft 12 It appeared originally in the Review of Politics 15/​3 (1953a): 303–​27. 13 “In the Third Reich … there was only one man who did and could make decisions and hence was politically fully responsible. That was Hitler himself who, therefore, not in a fit of megalomania but quite correctly once described himself as the only man in Germany who was irreplaceable” ([1964c] 2003, 30). The background of Arendt’s

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statement must be recalled:  she was rejecting grand theories of history that reduce human beings to mere emblems of trends. 14 Arendt argues that Hitler’s adoption of nationalist rhetoric was an example of such a lie (413). It was a lie because he did not believe it –​Hitler had often opposed nationalism as a narrow doctrine –​and because its corollary was the notion that National Socialism was not for export but would rest content with revisions of the Versailles Treaty (returning lost German territory), the unification of Germany and Austria and annexation of other contiguous German-​speaking lands. These were traditional demands of German post–​World War I foreign policy. As such, they were far too limited for Hitler. Stalin also lied when he publicly embraced socialism in one country. In fact, his aim was to conquer the whole world. 15 The passage is unpaginated in my e-​reader. It comes from the chapter “Sincerity in Virtue,” which is Chapter II of Part II. 16 Origins was completed in the fall of 1949, published in 1951. Later editions (1958, 1967) contain various small updates to take account of Stalin’s rule up to his death in 1953. 17 This article appeared as “Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution,” in the 1958 second edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace; 2nd edition, 1958), 481–​510. It was expunged from later editions and reprintings of Origins. 18 “Ceaseless Radicalization” and “The Drive for Radicalization” –​­chapters 13 and 14 of Kershaw (2008) –​also largely recapitulate her arguments, albeit with many more examples than Arendt herself could have known about. Similarly, Michael Mann (1987) emphasizes the centrality of constant mobilization in the Soviet case. 19 Arendt agreed. Speaking to students at Cornell University, she designated Tocqueville the “first Social Scientist” who “anticipates most” of social science’s later “discoveries.” Arendt, “From Machiavelli to Marx” (1965) Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress (Speeches and Writings File, 1923–​1975), Image 50. 20 For instance, Eichmann in Jerusalem contains a sociological account of the role of language in the erosion of conscience of Nazi functionaries. Nazi slogans and catch phrases –​the SS motto “My honor is my loyalty,” euphemisms such as “final solution,” “special treatment,” “resettlement” –​functioned both to conceal the enormity of what was being done, and to lend murder the moral tincture of duty. During the war, the slogan was “the battle of destiny for the German people” coined either by Hitler or by Goebbels, which, as Arendt observed, “made self-​deception easier on three counts: it suggested, first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny and not by Germany; and, third, that it was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated” ([1963c] 1994, 52). 21 The expression is Pitkin’s (1998, 26), not Arendt’s, but it is apposite. Rahel Varnhagen is Goffmanesque avant la lettre except in its insistence on an authentic inner self. 22 Arendt added: “Perhaps reality consists only in the agreement of everybody, is perhaps a social phenomenon, would soon collapse as soon as someone had the courage forthrightly and consistently to deny its existence. … Only truths discovered by reason are irrefutable; only these can always be made plain to everyone. Poor reality, dependent upon human beings who believe in it and confirm. For it as well as their confirmation are transitory.” Compare with Peter Berger’s concept of “structures of plausibility” ([1965] 1973, 53–​56; and 1992, 123–​43). 23 Arendt ([1959b] 2000)  actually defends the integrity of social relationships in “Reflections on Little Rock.” On the importance of society and sociability for thinking, see Arendt (1989, 10, 19, 26–​27, 42, 69–​70, 72–​74).

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CONTRIBUTORS Judith Adler’s publications fall within the domain of the sociology of culture. She has published on the sociology of art, the sociology and social history of travel and tourism, the mobility cultures of early monasticism and Robert Nisbet’s approach to sociology as an art form. Peter Baehr is chair professor of social theory at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is the editor of The Portable Hannah Arendt (2002) and the author of Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Social Sciences (2010). He is currently writing a book on the political writings of the British critic Rebecca West. Daniel Gordon is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has published extensively on the Enlightenment and the history of Enlightenment scholarship. He is the author of Citizens Without Sovereignty (1994), translator of Voltaire’s Candide (1999) and editor of Postmodernism and the Enlightenment (2001). Gordon was also, for many years, the coeditor of the journal Historical Reflections. Liah Greenfeld is a sociologist who specializes in the study of nationalism. She is the author of the trilogy Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (1992), The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (2001) and Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience (2013). Johannes Lang is a social psychologist at the Danish Institute for International Studies and a lecturer in psychology at the University of Copenhagen. He has previously been a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at Yale. Lang is the coeditor of Emotions and Mass Atrocity (forthcoming) and codirector of a new research project on the role of psychology in the American-​led wars of the twenty-​first century. John Levi Martin is the Florence Borchert Bartling Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Social Structures (2009), The

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Explanation of Social Action (2011) and Thinking Through Theory (2015), as well as of articles on methodology, cognition, social networks and theory. He is currently working on the history of the theory of social action. Guido Parietti studied philosophy at Sapienza –​University of Rome, and currently is a PhD candidate in political theory at Columbia University. His main research interest is the analysis and history of political concepts. He is currently writing a dissertation on the concept of power. Charles Turner teaches sociology at Warwick University, UK. He is the author of Modernity and Politics in the Work of Max Weber (1992), and Investigating Sociological Theory (2010). He has coedited volumes on Social Theory after the Holocaust (with Robert Fine, 2000), The Shape of the New Europe (with Ralf Rogowski, 2006) and The Sociology of Wilhelm Baldamus (with Mark Erickson, 2010). He is one of the editors of The European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology. Philip Walsh is associate professor and the chair of sociology at York University, Toronto. He has published articles in the areas of social theory, political sociology and the sociology of knowledge. He is the author of Skepticism, Modernity and Critical Theory (2005) and Arendt Contra Sociology: Theory, Society and Its Science (2015).

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INDEX Abel, Theodor 43 absolute 114 abundance 65 acting in concert 206 action 5, 8–​9, 11–​15, 17–​19, 20–​21, 21n2, 34–​35, 49–​69, 70n10, 71n18, 72n28, 118, 148, 155, 161–​62, 164, 166–​67, 169–​72, 177–​78, 180, 183, 191–​92, 198–​99, 201–​6, 211–​12, 214, 216n9, 229–​30, 232–​33, 244, 245n10 beginning character of 56, 121 collective 75, 209 communicative 14, 161 ends of 55–​56, 64, 167 freedom and 50, 114, 148 intention and 14, 148, 191 irreversibility of 70n5 labor and 56, 63, 206 laws of 5 moral 168, 180, 182 political 17, 30, 51–​53, 55–​56, 60–​61, 65, 111, 198, 206, 214 politics and 18, 51–​52, 54 power and 201, 205 revolution and 122–​23, 125 sociological theories of 49–​50, 66–​68, 138, 169, 210 speech and 12, 15, 55, 57–​58 strategic 210 thinking and 95–​96, 100 work and 12, 54–​58, 62, 203, 205, 214 activity 5, 11–​16, 20, 34, 41, 45, 54, 56–​57, 59, 62, 65, 67–​68, 70n2, 72n29, 136–​38, 140, 164, 205–​6 acts 19, 35, 44, 49, 52, 58, 68, 145, 148, 159, 161, 177, 182 Adler, Hans 76, 92

Adorno, Theodor 167, 177 aesthetics 2, 20, 56, 71n18, 88, 168 Africa 1 agency 1, 14, 168–​70, 173n11, 177, 243 moral 180, 182 agora 58 Al Qaeda 45 alienation 13, 15, 204 altruism 45, 100, 161 Amar, Akhil 116 Amendola, Giovanni 25–​26, 27, 29 American Constitution 115–​16 American Founders 107, 116–​17, 124 anthropology 49, 68 Améry, Jean 90, 92, 98 Angels with Dirty Faces (Film) 70n9 animal laborans 31, 64–​65, 72n29, 173n12, 181 animals 58, 150, 181, 202 Annales School 121 anomie 8, 222 anti-​Semitism 3, 30, 32, 33, 76, 82, 87, 91–​92, 100, 110, 178, 234 anxiety 169–​70 apathy 222 Apel, Karlo-​Otto 209–​10 aporias 160, 167 appearances 15, 18, 63, 135, 144 space of 17, 114, 203, 209 world of, 135, 137–41, 173n7, 192, 199. See also two worlds theories Appiah, Kwame Anthony 162 archein/​agere 56, 201 Archer, Margaret 169–​71 architecture 15, 115 Arendt, Hannah academic career 5

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Arendt, Hannah (Cont.) books 2 education 3 emigration 4 Heidegger and 3, 52, 78, 96–​98, 150, 162 Jaspers and 3, 52, 97 in Paris 4 marriage 3–​4 youth 3 Arendt, Martha 3 Argentina 76, 86, 90, 156 aristocracy 26–​27 Aristotle 26–​27, 50–​55, 58, 62–​63, 68, 69nn2–​3, 71n15, 111, 148, 176 Aron, Raymond 8, 28–​29, 243 artworks. See works of art ataraxia 167 Athenians 56 Auden, W. H. 5 Aufbau 4 Augustine 3, 52, 54, 70n6, 87, 109 Auschwitz 176 authoritarian personality 101 authoritarianism 26, 29, 221, 226–​27 authority 26, 34–​35, 80, 98–​9, 118, 120, 148, 157, 179, 198, 226–​27, 229–​30, 238, 245n9 charismatic 227, 229, 232 meaning of 198 rational-​legal 15 totalitarian 229 traditional 15 See also Herrschaft autocracy 8, 10 automation 13, 19 autonomy 114, 158, 170, 199 Bachrach, Peter 211 Baglioni, Gian Pablo 70n10 Bailyn, Bernard 121 Baker, Keith M. 122–​23 Baldwin, James 5 Balkans 1 banality 83–​85, 90–​91, 102nn5,8, 156 of evil 86, 88–​90, 95, 109–​10, 130–​31, 150–​51, 156 See also evil

Bandura, Albert 186–​87 Baratz, Morton S 211 Barnes, Barry 61 Bauman, Zygmunt 10, 169, 172n4, 183 Beard, Charles 116, 121 Beck, Ulrich 169–​70 beginning 19, 56, 107, 111, 113, 117, 120–​21, 193, 201 behaviorism 67, 211 Behemoth (Neumann) 38 Being and Time (Heidegger) 7, 145–​46 beliefs 40, 143, 147 benevolence 185 Benhabib, Seyla 13, 21n2 Bergen-​Belsen 176 Berger, Peter 14–​15, 246n22 Beria, Lavrentiy 240, 245n1 Between Facts and Norms (Habermas) 208 Between Past and Future (Arendt) 18 Bhaskar, Roy 18 Bible, the 100, 133 Bill of Rights 116 biology 141, 149, 181 bios politikos 54, 58 bios theoreticos 198 biotechnology 19 black comedy 77–​79, 85–​86 Bloch, Marc 132 Blücher, Heinrich 4, 84, 88 Blumenfeld, Kurt 3–​4 Boer War 40 bolshevism 29 bonapartism 227 Bourdieu, Pierre 49 bourgeoisie 32, 34, 36, 37, 66, 124, 224, 233, 243 bourgeoisie, rise of 34 Brecht, Bertolt 78 Browning, Christopher 190–​91 bureaucracy 31, 35, 80, 94, 223, 225, 229 Caesarism 227 camps. See concentration camps, death camps, labor camps Canovan Margaret 10, 245n2 capitalism 10, 28, 33, 36, 45, 116, 243

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Index Catholic Church 27 Catholics 80 causal powers 60 causality 18–​9, 30, 60, 67, 107, 113, 121–​24, 140, 167, 178, 184–​5, 187, 215, 234 Chaplin, Joyce 186 character 34, 98, 178 national 77, 87, 101 charisma 16, 34, 221, 225–​30, 232, 234–​35, 238, 241–​42, 245nn7–​9 See also authority chemistry 178 China 44, 115, 245n6 christianity 62 citizens 17, 26, 28, 58, 107, 111, 125, 160, 180, 208, 225 citizenship 180, 222, 244 city-​state 28, 50–​51, 54, 58, 62 civil rights movement 117, 124–​25 civil society 11, 26–​7, 37, 209, 243 Civil War (US) 115, 125 classes 28, 30–​31, 33–​35, 39–​40, 42–​44, 51, 67–​68, 92, 108, 114, 119, 121, 124, 221–​23, 233, 237–​38 classification 8–​9, 15, 17, 27, 29, 244 classless society 33 Clausewitz 61 clichés 97, 134 cogito ergo sum 132–​33 cogs 94 cognition 113, 138–​40 Cold War 1, 25 Collingwood, R. G. 241 Columbia University 120 Commentary 5, 30 Commission on European Jewish Reconstruction 4 Committee on Social Thought 5 common sense 8, 16, 140, 192, 230 communicative power 198, 208–​10, 216n12 communism 3, 27–​31, 33, 36–​37, 45, 108, 115, 120 compassion 93, 116, 185–​87, 189, 192 “Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon” (Mannheim) 11

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Concentration camps 8, 30–​31, 40, 92, 175, 179–​80, 216n10, 244 as laboratories 179 Confessions (Augustine) 52 Conrad, Joseph 88 conscience 17, 81, 99, 109, 134, 159–​60, 162, 172, 180, 246n20 conservatism 72n29, 117, 120, 238 conspiracy theories 10, 192, 232 Constitution 17, 25, 112, 115–​16, 118, 122 American 115–​16, 118 Weimar 10 constitutional democracy 111 constitutionalism 110, 117 constructivism 200 consumption 12–​13, 19, 71n24 contemplation 55, 71n23, 72, 164 contingency 215 conventions 157 cosmopolitanism 231 Court society 243 craftsman 50–​51, 62, 69 creativity 72n30, 148 crimes against humanity 76, 101, 108 criminals 29, 33, 83–​85, 87–​88, 92, 98, 134, 157, 159, 223–​24 criminology 76 cultural studies 2 culture 11, 17, 108–​9, 115, 142, 147–​48, 150, 169, 182, 191, 201, 206, 236 political 109, 117, 121 Dahl, Robert 211 Darwin, Charles 149 Dasein 200 Deane, Herbert E. 120 death camps 4, 8, 84, 177, 224, 230 death 17, 43, 54, 56, 63, 81, 86, 144, 146 Death’s Head units 224 Declaration of Independence 41, 118 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen 41 decolonization 20 deeds 19, 37, 60, 63, 67, 112, 114, 131, 159, 199, 201, 241 evil 131, 150 degradation 43, 181, 185 dehumanization 5, 175–​94

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dehumanization (Cont.) existential 184–​85 functions of 185, 190 moral 180, 184 physical 183 as precondition for genocide 175, 179, 184 as process 179, 182, 184 socio-​psychological theories of 179, 182–​89, 191–​92 deliberation 109, 164, 166–​67, 169–​72, 173n11 see also thinking democracy 16, 25–​29, 33–​34, 37, 40, 42, 44, 46, 107, 109, 116, 125, 182, 210 constitutional 111 deliberative 210 liberal 16, 37 social 34, 40, 46 Democritus 135 Descartes, René 66, 132–​33, 147, 173n7 despotism 16, 27–​29, 34, 44–​45 Destruction of the European Jews (Hilberg) 82 detachment 144, 199, 215n4 Dewey, John 49 dialectics 69, 237 dictatorship 8, 25, 34, 44, 223, 225, 242 Dignity 180, 224, 241 Dinesen, Isak 20 Dissent 5 dogmatism 39, 228 domination 15–​16, 41, 44, 179, 182–​84, 191, 209–​11, 216n10, 221, 224–​25, 229–​30, 233–​34, 236, 242, 245n9 See also Herrschaft Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 32 doubt 8, 13, 173n7 Dreyfus Affair 30 durability 24, 57–​58, 65, 71n21, 118, 206, 229 Earth 65, 85, 200, 234 economics 17, 108, 236 Edelstein, Dan 122–​23 education 1, 114 egalitarian 199

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Arendt) 2, 75–​101, 107–​10, 124, 126n1, 129, 150, 156, 246n20 as black comedy 77–​79 as morality tale 80, 89–​90, 95, 98 as story 82, 92, 93, 95–​96, 98, 101 controversies over 75, 80, 84–​85, 90, 110, 156 portrait of Eichmann in 75, 83, 88–​90, 93, 98, 100, 156 publication 76, 82, 91 social science and 76, 80, 86, 90, 101 subtitle of 86, 88 tone of 77–​78 treatment of anti-​Semitism in 76, 82, 87, 91, 110 writing of 78 Eichmann, Adolf 12, 75–​101, 101n1, 102n10, 108–​10, 150, 156–​57, 159, 177, 191, 245n1 anti-​Semitism of 82, 92, 100, 109 as clown 77, 83, 98 as social type 75, 80, 89–​90, 101 career of 80–​81 conscience of 81, 90, 109 death of 86 motives of 85, 91–​93 ordinariness of 83–​84, 89–​90, 131 thoughtlessness of 87, 90, 98, 131, 155–​56 trial of 4, 75–​77, 79, 130, 144, 156 See also banality of evil eidos 62 Einstein, Albert 136, 141 Elster, Jon 163 emergence 149 emotions 77, 87, 94, 162–​63, 169, 182, 185–​90, 192, 222, 226, 229 empathy 93, 185–​91 energeia 55 England 124, 148 enlightenment 184–​85, 191, 243–​44 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume) 132 epictetus 167 epistemology 21n1, 148 Epoché 200 equality 28, 115, 117, 119, 122

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Index Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke) 132 essences 173n7, 201 essentialism 112, 201 eternal 39, 63–​64, 233 Ethics (Aristotle) 50–​51, 69n2 ethics 45, 50, 157–​58, 231 eudaimonia 64 Europe 31–​33, 42–​43, 53, 56, 66, 76, 79, 91, 120, 185, 223 events 17, 19, 20, 30, 121, 123–​24, 134, 178, 207 evil 75, 79, 82–​85, 87–​93, 95–​100, 109–​ 11, 131–​32, 134, 137, 144, 150–​51, 161–​63, 175, 180, 202–​3 banality of, See banality of evil problem of 95, 143 radical 89, 97, 231 excellence 50–​51, 56, 70n9 exchange theory 14 exclusion 179, 181–​84, 216n9 executioners 92, 94, 177, 192–​93 existentialism 6, 112, 170, 176, 184–​85, 200 Existenz philosophy 3, 6, 7, 11, 52, 68 fabrication 12–​15, 21n2, 41, 54–​55, 58, 62, 69, 102n6, 164 of corpses 102n6 See also work fascination 225, 228–​30, 232, 237 fascism 25–​26, 28–​29, 70n10, 76, 178 Faulkner, William 20 fear 17, 28–​29, 144, 156, 159, 163, 186 field theory 49 Final Solution 81, 85, 89, 93, 109–​10, 178, 231 First Treatise on Government (Locke) 120 Forever Flowing, Life and Fate (Grossman) 242 Frankfurt Trial 159 fraternity 115 freedom 13, 17, 20, 60, 62, 67, 107, 111–​ 15, 117–​18, 125, 141, 147, 167, 193, 198, 203–​4, 207 meaning of 20, 198, 204 mental 57 opposed to necessity 140 of the will 17, 145, 148

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See also actionpolitics Freiburg University 102 n16 friendship 14, 21n2, 223 Fuchs, Stephen 165 Führer 81, 189, 221, 231, 242 functionalism 9, 199, 211, 213, 215, 241 Furet, François 121 futility 57, 62–​63, 65 Galilei, Galileo 65 Gaue 37 Gaus, Günter 215n2 Gellner, Ernest 46 General will 122 genetic engineering 18 Geneva 4 genocide 1–​2, 75–​77, 80, 82, 86, 89–​91, 93–​95, 100, 101n3, 109, 172n4, 175–​76, 178–​79, 182, 184–​90 moral exclusion and 184 organization of 79, 82, 93 See also dehumanization Gentile, Giovanni 26 German Council of Jews 91 German Ministry of Education 97 German Zionist Organization 4 Germany 2–​4, 6, 8, 33–​34, 40, 43–​44, 77, 79, 84, 86, 94, 109, 133, 148, 150, 158, 162, 176, 182 189 20, 223–​24, 227, 245n13, 246n14 Federal Republic of 40 Nazi 10, 26, 28, 36, 43, 110, 158–​59, 180, 182, 221 Weimar 34, 158 Gerth, Hans 227, 229 Gestapo 4, 75, 237, 242 Giddens, Anthony 169–​70 Gifford Lectures 129, 145, 164 God 32, 66, 100, 109, 130, 141–​43, 157–​58, 181, 230, 241 Goebbels, Joseph 191, 224, 246n20 Goering, Herman 224 Goldhagen Daniel 159 good, radical 89 goodness 3, 62, 109, 241 government 8, 17, 27–​28, 32–​34, 37, 45, 62, 83, 116–​18, 203, 234, 236–​37 self-​ 115

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government (Cont.) totalitarian 27, 176 types of 25–​27, 71n15 Vichy 30 Great Purge 231 greatness 66, 84, 88, 101, 117, 131 Greed 100 Greeks 52, 56–​58, 63, 65, 67–​68, 133, 137, 146 Gross, Jan 91 Grossman, Vasily 242 Grosz, Georg 78 Guardini, Romano 241 guilds 13 Habermas, Jürgen 13, 14, 70n12, 198, 208–​10, 214, 217n12, 218n14 habits 51, 98, 157, 244 Hallie, Philip 99 Hamilton, Lee 183 Hannah Arendt (film) 110 Hannover 2 happiness 16, 50, 63–​64, 111, 116, 166 Hausner, Gideon 83 Hegel, Georg William Friedrich 64, 69, 133, 142, 199 Heidegger, Martin 3, 6–​7, 11, 14, 52–​53, 70n7, 78, 88, 94, 96–​98, 100, 102n6, 131–​36, 138, 145–​46, 150, 162–​64, 173n7, 199–​201, 205, 207, 214, 216nn7–​8, 243 lack of character of 98 Nazism and 3, 17, 97, 102n16, 150, 162 See also Arendt Heisenberg, Werner 66 Hermeneutics 191, 209, 214, 240 Heroes 7, 43, 70n7, 72n28 Herrschaft 15–​16, 227, 229–​30, 245n9 See also authority Hilberg, Raul 76, 79–​80, 82, 90–​91 Himmler, Heinrich 41, 87, 94, 190–​91, 224, 235, 240, 245nn1,4 historicity 112 historiography 19–​20, 178 History and Theory 119 history 2, 9, 12, 18–​20, 27–​28, 31–​33, 39–​42, 50, 53, 62–​65, 67, 76–​77, 82, 89, 101, 109–​11, 113, 119–​20, 122,

124, 132, 139, 142, 145–​46, 155, 173n10, 175, 178, 180, 191, 193, 207, 224, 233, 239, 246n13 beginnings and 111, 193 events and 20, 64, 178 ideology and 9, 39 of ideas 32, 39, 130 laws of 42, 234 of philosophy 139, 146, 165 philosophy of 142, 210 political 27, 31, 112 of revolutions 112, 119, 121 social 28, 121 of social science 101, 155 as stories 63, 70n5 Hitler, Adolf 3, 20, 31, 34–​35, 176, 182, 189, 191, 221–​25, 227–​33, 237–​39, 242, 245nn1,4,8,13, 246n14 charisma of 226–​29, 232, 245n8 as clown 83 fascination of 228, 237 qualities of 34, 88, 226–​30 Hitler’s Table Talk (Ritter) 227–​28 Hobbes, Thomas 26, 198 Hobsbawm, E. J. 119–​21, 124 hoi polloi 60 holes of oblivion 43, 45 holocaust, the 10, 30, 53, 76, 82, 86, 90, 94–​95, 143, 150, 172n4, 175, 183, 190 See also Shoah homesickness 96 homo faber 64, 72n29, 166, 173n12 honor 28, 34, 96, 162–​63, 224 Hope Against Hope (Mandelstam) 242 Höss, Rudolf 189–​90 Household (oikos) 58, 62 Hubris 193 Hughes, Everett 86 human nature 17, 67, 107, 112, 149, 176, 185, 193 human rights 1, 31, 41–​42 humaneness (Humanitus) 185 humanity 9, 32, 63, 76–​77, 80, 82–​83, 101, 108, 111, 113, 143, 147, 151n2, 175, 177, 181–​83, 185–​87, 192 humanity formula 14 Hume, David 132–​33, 185–​86

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Index humiliation 179, 186 Hungarian Revolution 241 Hungary 43, 120 Hunt, Lynn 121 Husserl, Edmund 3, 199–​200 ideal types 55, 89, 129–​30 identity 148, 150, 170, 181, 222, 237, 243 Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Bailyn) 121 ideologies 8–​10, 25, 28–​29, 39, 122, 162, 231, 237, 244 ideology 1, 6, 8, 28–​29, 32, 35, 38–​40, 45, 72, 82–​83, 96, 101, 122, 177, 182, 189–​90, 192–​93, 209, 217n15, 225, 238 Nazi 38, 189–​90, 192 totalitarian 9, 31, 38–​40, 45, 155 “Ideology and Terror” (Arendt) 32–​33, 38, 42, 237 Ideology and Utopia (Mannheim) 5–​6, 8, 11 Il Mundo 25 imitation 186 immortality 57, 60, 63–​65, 69, 71n21, 141 imperialism 30, 32, 40, 178, 234 In the First Circle (Solzhenitsyn) 242 individuality 67, 168, 176–​79, 185, 189, 193 indoctrination 32, 36, 40, 45, 192 industrial society 13, 28–​29, 124 infrastructure 26 inhumanity 84, 86, 177, 178, 182, 185–​86, 193 inner dialogue 99, 160, 162 See also thinking, internal conversation innocence 192 instrumental rationality 41, 166–​67, 204, 225 integration 45, 125 intellectuals 5, 78, 97, 132, 150, 162, 165, 202 intentionality 14, 141 internal conversation 155, 160, 169–​72 See also thinking, inner dialogue Interpreting the French Revolution (Furet) 121 intersubjectivity 11, 191–​92, 200 introspection 136, 148, 160, 243

275

invisibility 144, 183 Iranian Revolution 172n1 iron cage 19 irony 1, 77 ISIS 45 Islam 45 Israel 76 Jacobin Terror 122 Jaspers, Gertrud 113 Jaspers, Karl 3, 6–​7, 17, 52, 78, 80, 82, 84, 87–​89, 91, 97–​98, 102n5, 102n15, 112–​14, 150, 176, 216n5, 227 Jefferson, Thomas 118 Jerusalem 76 Jesus of Nazareth 160 Jewish leaders 77, 84, 86, 90–​91 Jewish question 31, 225 Jewish Social Studies 30 judging 53, 69n4, 130, 144, 164, 168, 198 judgment 7, 16, 19, 29, 52–​53, 66–​68, 71n18, 216n6 moral 77, 90, 98–​99, 132, 192, 205 subsuming 7 Jünger, Ernst 34 jurisprudence 88 Kant, Immanuel 3, 14, 52–​53, 62, 66, 68, 89, 93, 100, 130, 132–​34, 137–​42, 144–​45, 158–​61, 173n9, 185, 188, 199–​201, 210, 214, 215n4, 216n6, 241 Kasztner, Rudolf 87 Kelman, Herbert 183 Kierkegaard, Soren 113 Koestler, Arthur 5 Kohn, Jerome 5 Kolakowski, Leszek 45 Königsberg 3 Koonz, Claudia 182 Kruschchev, Nikolai 231 Kuhn, Thomas 136 labor 18–​19, 44, 58–​59, 62–​65, 68–​69, 72n30, 164, 198, 206, 243 action and 12–​13, 54, 64, 69, 164 circularity of 57, 63, 69 life and 57–​58, 181 theory of value 15

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labor (Cont.) valuation of 41, 43, 63–​64, 205–​6 wage 10 work and 12–​13, 15, 56–​57, 69, 70n11, 164, 202, 206 labor camps 30–​31, 33, 40, 81 Latour, Bruno 70n14 Latvians 87 law 2, 8, 25, 31–​32, 42, 44, 67, 76 Le Chambon 99 leader principle 225–​26 Leatherman, LeRoy 118 Lebensphilosophie 68 Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Arendt) 168 Lefort, Claude 26 legitimacy 9, 16, 29, 90, 227, 229 Let History Judge (Medvedev) Levi, Primo 98, 176–​78, 183, 189, 191 liberal democracy 16, 27, 37 liberalism 1, 16, 25, 27, 36, 40, 45, 46, 102n7, 208 liberty 107 life 141 lifeworld 208 liquid modernity 169 Lithuanians 87 Littell, Jonathan 193 Locke, John 120 Logos 97 Louis xiv, 267 love 3, 14, 21n2, 69, 78, 150–​51, 230 of wisdom 133, 148 Lucifer 130 Luckmann, Thomas 14–​15 Luhmann, Niklas 72n28, 217n14 Lukes, Steven 198, 208, 211–​13, 215, 217nn15–​16 lutheranism 34 Machiavelli, Niccolo 52, 70n10, 120 Madison, James 118 mafia 45 Mandelstam, Nadezhda 242 Mann Michael 26, 40, 43, 246n18 Mann, Thomas 5 manners 157, 159

Mannheim, Karl 5–​7, 11, 21n1, 113, 227 Maoism 9 Marburg 3, 52 Marcuse, Herbert 167 Marx, Karl 1, 6, 11, 12–​13, 15, 33, 53–​55, 62, 64, 68–​69, 70n7, 71n22, 72n30, 115, 123, 125, 135, 140, 238 Marxism 4, 12–​13, 18, 32, 39, 71n22, 108, 115–​16, 119–​22, 124–​25, 132, 216n13 masses 33–​36, 40, 43–​44, 80, 90, 221, 224, 230–​33, 238, 240–​41, 243, 245n2 meaning of 222 as mob 222 as superfluous people 222–​23 Mathematics 66, 140–​42 May Day 44 McCarthy, Mary 5, 78, 82–​83 Mead, George Herbert 161, 173n5 meaning 11, 13–​15, 39, 46, 66–​67, 138–​41, 143–​44, 146–​49, 164, 166, 172, 178, 200, 204, 244 and action 19, 56, 166–​67, 180, 202–​3 and thinking 138, 143–​44, 164–​66, 169, 171–​72 see also thinking meaninglessness 34, 37, 41, 53, 63, 66, 140, 142, 167–​68, 183, 202, 204, 206 means 12, 14, 40, 50–​52, 55, 57, 59, 62–​63, 66, 71n23, 91, 141, 160, 166, 197, 202, 204–​5 of coercion 9–​10, 29 of persuasion 9–​10, 29 of production 9–​10, 57 mechanization 64–​65 meditation 164 Medvedev, Roy 242 Mein Kampf 234 Melville, Herman 20 memory 63, 76, 101, 145, 180 Men in Dark Times (Arendt) 20 mental activity 130, 132, 155–​56, 165, 168–​72 mental faculties 132, 144

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Index Merleau–​Ponty, Maurice 133 metaphysics (Aristotle) 50 metaphysics 136, 148 Metternich, Klemens Von 225 Michels, Robert 35 Middle Ages 137 Middle East 1 mind 7, 66, 71n25, 132–​33, 135–​37, 141–​44, 146–​49, 165, 167, 169, 172, 186, 205 mind, tripartite model of 167 Modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman) 10 modernity 80, 94, 109–​11, 124, 158, 169–​70, 172, 183, 205, 214 Molotov, Vyacheslav 224 monarchy 9, 26–​27 Moore, Barrington 123–​24 moral conduct 156, 158, 162, 164–​65 morality 34, 156–​63, 224 ordinary 98, 157–​59 thinking and 160–​62, 168–​69 Morriss, Peter 212 mortality 54, 63 Moyn, Samuel 185 Mussolini, Bennito 25, 32 Nabokov, Vladimir 191 natality 19, 173n12 nation-​state 31–​32, 34, 42, 225 national character. See character National Socialism 3, 8, 29, 97, 102n17, 224–​25, 229, 235, 238, 246n14 nationalism 31–​32, 246n14 Nazi party 35, 43, 162, 231 necessity 67, 90, 140, 206–​7, 215 Neo-​Kantianism 62, 138 Neumann, Franz 38 New School for Social Research 5, 157 New York Review of Books 5 New York 5 Nietzsche (Heidegger) 145 Nietzsche, Friedrich 68, 113, 135, 146, 158, 173n8 nihilism 89 Nisbet, Robert 244 NKVD 37, 236–​37 nobodies 161–​63, 169

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nomos 202, 216n9 normativity 49, 163, 166, 176, 180, 183, 186, 200–​201, 203–​5, 208–​10, 215 norms 101, 134, 157, 163, 191 novus ordo saeclorum 111 Nuremberg 45, 242 Nuremberg trials 83 Oakeshott, Michael 49, 72n29 obedience 16, 84, 98–​99, 101, 157–​58, 161 objective enemies 8, 37–​38, 44, 237 obligation 158–​61, 180, 182–​83, 185–​87 occupations 43 Of thinking 134, 136, 156, 161, 163, 164–​65, 168 oikos, See household On Revolution (Arendt) 2, 107–​14, 118, 125, 206 one-​party state 28–​29 ontological difference 7 ontology 5, 149 fundamental 11, 149 political 178 Origin of Species (Darwin) 149 Origins and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origins and Principles of the French Revolution (Von Gentz) 114 Orwell, George 5, 38 Palestine 4, 81, 83 pan-​movements 31, 231 paranoia 115, 179, 193 Paris 4, 30 commune 123 parliament 13, 15, 26, 33 Parsons, Talcott 8, 15, 49–​50, 61, 217n16, 222 Partisan Review 30 pathos 77–​78, 85–​86, 121 Pavlov’s dog 181 peasants 124, 223 Pericles 56 personality 49, 181, 228, 234, 238 authoritarian 101 moral 158, 160–​61, 163, 185 see also charisma

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personality (Cont.) personhood 2, 155, 168–​69 persons 38, 42, 45, 57, 67, 81, 137, 160–​62, 164, 171–​72, 181, 186, 199, 200, 203, 224, 239, 241 juridical 179–​80, 183–​85 moral 180–​81, 185 stateless 41 phenomenology 7, 185, 198–​200, 214 philosophers 3, 7, 10, 18, 32, 55, 68, 100, 112, 130, 132–​33, 136–​39, 141–​42, 144–​45, 147–​51, 155, 157, 160, 162, 164, 167, 169, 173n8,198–​99, 244 philosophy 2–​8, 8, 11, 16, 18, 21n1, 32, 44, 52, 54–​55, 63–​64, 75, 80, 85–​86, 88, 97, 107, 112–​14, 119–​21, 130, 132–​33, 136–​39, 142–​43, 145, 148–​50, 156, 158, 163–​64, 166–​67, 199–​200, 215n3, 216nn6 analytic 198 ancient 52–​53, 145, 148, 173n3 German 132, 135, 138, 146, 148, 150 history of 139, 142, 165, 210 modern 145, 173n13 moral 157–​58, 161 of science 136 political 1, 35, 49, 122, 207–​8 “Philosophy and Sociology” (Arendt) 6, 113 phronesis 51–​55 physei 202 Picasso, Pablo 75 Pierce, C. S. 70n12 Pilate, Pontius 81 Pitkin, Hanna 31, 70n13, 72n27, 246n21 Plato 16, 51, 54–​55, 58–​60, 62, 64, 68n2, 71nn19–​20, 165, 167–​68 plurality 13, 16, 62, 82, 97, 177, 199–​201, 203, 206, 236 poiesis 50, 62 Poland 43–​44, 237 Poliakov, Léon 76 polis 9, 50, 55, 62–​63, 68, 111 olitical parties 16, 29–​30, 33–​35, 43, 222 Political Science Quarterly 120 political science 5, 16, 28, 30, 50, 61, 76, 120, 130, 208–​10, 213

political theory 1–​2, 108, 120, 129, 177, 201, 207–​8, 215 politics 2–​3, 6, 14–​18, 20, 26–​27, 29, 33–​34, 39, 43, 50, 52, 54, 61, 67–​68, 70n14, 72n28, 107, 109–​12, 114, 155, 163, 168, 197, 199, 202, 205, 207–​9, 214–​15, 215n3, 222 and appearance 17–​18, 114 as sui generis 18 freedom as 13 meaning of 5, 16–​17, 50, 60–​61 power and 15–​16, 197 autonomy of 199 Weber’s conception of 16, 60–​61 positivism 135 postmodernism 213 poverty 95, 108, 115, 120, 125 power 1–​2, 6, 9, 15, 26–​27, 32–​34, 36–​40, 44, 115–​16, 179, 188, 197–​217, 236–​40, 245nn4,9 to act 134, 164, 166, 212 and action 201, 205 administrative 208–​10 communicative 198, 208–​10 definitions of 209–​15, 215n1 as domination 210–​11 and freedom 207 and instrumental rationality 204 lust for 225 monopoly of 29, 240 and politics 15–​16, 61, 202, 204, 214–​15 as potentia 211; total 238 and violence 71n15, 197–​207, 214 and visibility 236 powerlessness 37, 201, 204–​5, 238 practices 13, 19, 44–​45, 49, 51, 163, 165, 179, 182, 209, 235, 243 Prague 4 prattein/​gerere 56, 201 praxis 49–​50, 56, 58 pre-​Socratics 132 Princeton University 5 prisons 42 private sphere 11, 13, 16, 21n2, 62, 65, 70n7, 109, 112, 116, 158, 168, 170, 172n2, 206, 223–​24, 243 processes 17–​20, 64, 67 professional thinkers 130, 134, 137

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Index proletariat 36 propaganda 3, 10, 32, 35, 45, 232–​33, 243 Protestantism 80 Protocols of the Elders of Zion 231 psychoanalysis 76 psychology 34, 43, 76, 84, 86, 88, 95, 113, 150, 155, 163, 175–​80, 182, 185–​87, 189–​90, 192–​93, 226, 245n10 psychopathology 88, 97 public opinion 209 public sphere 11, 13, 57–​58, 61, 65, 108, 110, 171–​72, 192 Quetelet, Adolphe 67 race 39 racism 32, 39, 177–​78, 183, 231, 234 Rahel Varnhagen (Arendt) 129 rationality 3, 6, 14–​15, 49, 69n1, 97, 140, 158, 178, 191, 208–​9, 210, 225, 245n7 purposive/​instrumental (zweckrationalitat) 14, 40–​41, 63, 166, 204, 225 value/​substantive 63, 166 technological 54, 80, 94 See also instrumental rationality rationalization 6, 82, 190, 227 realism 18, 155, 191–​92, 234 reality 6–​7, 17–​18, 38, 57, 63, 66, 84, 86, 94–​96, 101, 108, 114, 119, 122, 133–​35, 138–​39, 141, 143, 148–​49, 173n7, 177, 182, 191–​92, 202, 207, 216n10, 229, 233, 246n22 social 114, 125, 184, 192 of thinking 165–​66 See also social reality reason (Vernunft) 137 Red Army 237 reflection 160 reflexivity 155, 169–​72 Reitlinger, Gerald 76 religion 11, 16, 45, 89, 148, 157–​58, 161, 173nn1–​2, 182, 226, 229–​30 remembrance 180 repentance 161 republicanism 1, 28, 118, 208 resistance 189

279

Responsibility and Judgment (Arendt) 155–​59, 164, 168 Review of Politics 30, 245n12 revolution 108 American 111–​12, 114–​17, 119–​21, 125, 206 French 28, 108, 111, 113–​16, 119, 121–​24, 199 meaning of 120 Richard III 162 Richelieu, Cardinal 225 Riesman, David 102n7 right to have rights 180–​81, 184 rights of man 32, 41, 115 See also human rights rise of the social 11 risk 170 Ritter, Gerhard 227 ritual 44 Robespierre, Maximilian 28 Röhm, Ernst 235 Romans 19, 58, 123, 144, 167, 185 romanticism 96, 102n14 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques 120 Runciman, W. G. 9 Russian front 81 ruthlessness 189 Sabini, John 192 sadism 87, 91–​94, 100, 159 Saint Francis 52 Salisbury, Harrison E 118 sans-​culottes 115 Sartre, Jean-​Paul 202 Satan 84, 88, 92, 101, 130 Savage, Rowan 183 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm 70n12 Schmidt, Anton 53 Schmitt, Carl 26, 131 Schoenerer, Georg Ritter Von 231 Schopenhauer, Arthur 63, 69 science 1, 11, 19, 21n1, 45, 54, 65–​67, 90, 97, 113, 134, 136, 139–​42, 148–​49, 164, 213 scientists 67, 138, 155, 164 Scripting Revolution (Baker and Edelstein) 122 second modernity 169 secret police 28, 31, 33, 37–​38, 44, 216n10, 236–​38 See also totalitarianism

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secret societies 36, 242, 244 secularization 20, 158, 172nn1–​2 segregation 125 Selbstdenkeni (inner dialogue) 96 self-​consciousness 171, 243 self-​fulfilling prophecies 10 self 34, 43, 70n7, 96, 98, 102n14, 133, 148, 160–​61, 167, 169–​71, 186–​88, 198 self-​interest 10, 188 Semelin, Jacques 186 sentiment 116, 185–​86 sexuality 17, 150 Shakespeare, William 88, 162 shame 98, 162–​63, 186 Shapiro, Leonard 32 Shoah 75, 82, 89, 100 See also holocaust Silver, Allan 61 Silver, Maury 192 Simmel, Georg 57, 68, 70n12, 242 Sin 36, 130–​31, 146, 191 slavery 8, 10, 13, 50–​51, 62, 68, 81, 115, 162, 203, 209, 225 Smith, Adam 185–​86 social 7–​9, 10, 12, 16, 18, 25–​29, 32, 36, 43, 49, 54, 57–​58, 60–​61, 64, 67–​69, 70n13, 76, 79–​80, 95–​97, 100, 108, 112–​25, 134, 155, 157–​58, 162, 168–​71, 176, 178, 183, 186–​87, 189, 199, 205, 213, 215n3, 222–​24, 226, 228, 242–​245, 246n23 action 58, 122, 138, 155 construction 14–​15, 244 democracy 34, 40, 46 facts 95, 134, 139, 149, 244 forces 6, 108, 113 groups 6, 230 labor 72n30 movements 162 the political and the 54, 57–​58, 60, 67–​68, 71n13, 115, 125 positions 7–​8, 171 processes 12, 20, 124 reality 114, 184, 192, 243 rise of the 11–​12, 15, 19–​20

strata 162, 222 structures 27–​29, 32, 34 viewpoint 5, 10, 12, 15 Social Construction of Reality (Berger and Luckmann) 14 Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship 124 social psychology 86, 179, 182, 185–​87, 192 social sciences 1–​21, 3, 34, 65, 66–​67, 76, 79–​80, 86, 88–​89, 95, 97–​98, 108, 119, 124, 151nn1–​2, 178–​79, 184, 198–​201, 207, 210–​11, 214–​15, 215nn1, 224, 246n19 Arendt’s criticisms of 5–​15, 27, 49, 65–​67, 108, 113, 167, 177–​78, 215 Arendt’s work and 30, 75–​76, 91, 101, 179, 182, 215 conception of politics in 15, 17 methods of 18 objects of 17, 19, 98 progress in 100–​101 socialism 2–​3, 25, 29, 64, 117, 232, 246n14 society 1–​2, 9, 11, 16, 20, 26–​27, 29, 35–​36, 40, 60, 62, 64, 68, 114–​16, 123, 125, 158, 166, 168, 171, 173n12, 179, 199, 208, 213, 223, 235, 243–​44, 246n23 civilized 45 of consumers 24 European 31, 223 French 114, 122 German 27, 162 industrial 13, 28–​29, 124 laboring 19, 58, 64, 65, 243 mass 80, 101, 243 modern 67, 228 politics and 43, 70n14, 207, 222 risk 170 Soviet 223 sociology 1–​8, 16, 20, 27–​28, 30, 43, 52, 88, 113–​14, 123–​24, 134–​35, 138, 151n2, 155, 168, 208–​10, 213, 226, 241–​45 American 49 Arendt’s criticisms of 6–​8, 50, 66, 108, 124–​25, 129, 221

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Index Arendt’s importance for 56, 68, 76, 86, 108 covert 241–​45 of dehumanization 182 history and 119–​20, 123–​24 of knowledge 6, 113, 146 philosophy and 5–​6, 8, 112–​14, 143 totalitarianism and 8–​10 Socrates 51, 54–​55, 97, 100, 132, 160–​61, 165–​68, 198, 217n19 solidarity 11, 100, 163, 180, 191, 222–​23, 233, 235 solipsism 57 solitude 96, 102n15 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 242 “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy” (Arendt) 157–​58 sovereignty 115–​16 Soviet Union 9, 26, 28, 30, 34, 36–​37, 43–​ 44, 53, 115, 120, 221, 223, 236, 239, 245n4, 246n18 soviets 37 Spandau Prison 245n8 Sparta 56 speech 12, 41, 55, 59, 67 action and 12–​13, 15, 57–​59, 63 Speer, Albert 245n8 spontaneity 41, 44, 171, 176, 179, 181, 185, 193, 230 SS guards 87 Stalin, Josef 8–​9, 27–​28, 223–​24, 226, 228, 230–​31, 234–​35, 237–​39, 241–​42 Hitler and 34, 176, 221–​25, 230–​33, 237, 239, 245nn1,4–​5, 246nn14,16 statistics 17, 67, 119, 230 Stein Gertrude 75 Stern, Günther 3–​4 stoicism 167 stories 13, 63, 70n5, 98, 101, 206 storytelling 20, 76 strength 197 subcultures 79–​80, 101 sui generis 18, 60 Supreme Court (US) 116 symbols 147 sympathy 185

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Taliban 45 Tarde, Gabriel 60 Taude 71n26 technocracy 18 technology 19, 44, 54, 80, 94, 111, 120, 172, 205 terror 1, 8, 10, 28–​29, 31, 45, 85, 115, 122–​23, 182, 192, 223, 225, 233 Thales 142 thaumezien 167 "The Concept of History: Past, Present and Future" (Arendt) 17, 20 The Human Condition (Arendt) 2, 10–​12, 12–​ 13, 15, 41, 50, 53–​54, 129, 155, 164, 166, 173nn6, 207 action in 55–​56, 69, 202 as conceptual history 50 critique of ‘the social’ in 112 labor in 56–​57, 69 politics in 68 structure of 11 theory of society in 11 work in 56–​57, 69 The Life of the Mind (Arendt) 2, 53, 70n6, 129–​51, 155, 166, 168, 173n6, 207 evil in 131, 144 Heidegger in 134–​35, 138, 145, 151 loose structure of 132, 144 meaning in 142–​43 mind in 144 origins 29 philosophical character of 130, 156 philosophical tradition in 132–​33 thinking in 130–​31, 134, 160, 164 unoriginality of 145, 146 willing in 145–​46, 148, 164 The Listener 5 The Lord (Guardini) 241 The New York Times 5, 118 The New Yorker 5, 76, 108, 156 The Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt) 2, 4, 8–​10, 16, 25, 28–​34, 38–​44, 53, 110, 129, 150, 178, 193, 228–​29, 242–​43, 245n3, 246n17 as history 32 camps in 40–​42, 89 editions of 229, 237, 242, 246n16

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The Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt) (cont.) ideology in 10, 32 methodology of 30–​31, 178 objections to sociology in 9 publication 4, 30 society in 243 use of analogies in 234 totalitarian leadership in 221–​22, 231 The Semiotic Self (Wiley) 173n5 theodicy 143 Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas) 14 thinking 13, 42, 52–​53, 65, 95–​97, 100–​101, 102n15, 108, 130, 134–​50, 151n2, 155–​72, 198, 206 acting and 96, 149, 169, 172 deliberation and 164, 166–​67, 169–​70, 172 Eichmann and 100–​101 Einstein on 136 evil and 131–​32, 134, 163 Heidegger and 96–​97, 162 knowing and 138, 141, 164–​66, 171 meaning and 140, 142–​43, 147–​48, 165–​66, 171–​72 means-​ends 14, 55, 57, 71n23, 141 morality and 97, 99, 137, 156–​57, 159–​64, 169 personhood and 160–​61, 169 racial 183 resultlessness of 164 revolutionary 124 social conditions of 114, 168, 172, 246n23 Socrates and 160–​61 sociological theories of 169 totalitarianism and 155 two-​worlds 135, 147, 149 willing and 164, 167 “Thinking and Moral Considerations” (Arendt) 158, 164 Third Reich 28, 182, 245n13 thought-​things 140–​41, 149 thought-​trains 161 thoughtlessness 83, 87, 90–​91, 94–​95, 98, 131, 134, 193, 243 time-​consciousness 170 Tocqueville, Alexis de 28

totalitarian elements in Marxism 32 ideologies 9, 38, 155, 238 leadership 34, 38–​39, 221–​46 movements 32, 37, 43, 45, 223, 229, 234, 236, 241–​42 organizations 35–​36, 38 propaganda 10, 35, 233 rule 10, 33–​34, 38, 40, 42, 44, 163, 176–​78, 223, 225, 241–​43 states 25–​27, 37–​38, 43, 223, 225, 231, 237 terror 192 totalitarianism 1, 5, 9–​10, 25–​46, 83, 86, 107, 111, 124, 130, 168, 172, 176–​78, 181–​82, 189, 192–​93, 198, 207, 209, 216n10, 221–​46 authoritarianism and 26–​27, 30, 32, 226, 229 bureaucracy and 31, 35, 79, 225, 230 camps and 40–​42, 45 classes and 33–​34, 222 comparisons 234–​35 elements of 30–​31 ephemerality of 39–​40 law and 42, 227 masses and 33–​34, 36, 40, 221–​24, 230, 232–​33, 238, 242, 245n2 meaning of 25–​27, 30 novelty of 8, 28, 34, 38, 225, 232 psychology of 34, 179, 193 secret police and 28, 31, 33, 37–​38, 216n10, 237 social structure of 32 strangeness of 8, 10 unprecedentedness of 8–​10, 28, 150, 226 utilitarianism and 8, 10, 225 tradition 11–​12, 32, 35, 38, 42–​43, 52, 86, 89, 92, 99–​100, 132–​33, 135, 139, 164, 170–​71, 226–​27, 237 revolutionary 125 of thought 133–​35, 137–​38, 146, 149–​50, 225

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Index western 69, 130, 135, 192 traditional 26, 34, 44 action 15 concepts 8 despotisms 29, 44–​45 identities 11 tragedy 77, 190 transcendence 66, 70n9, 113 triad of activities 10, 12–​15, 52, 54, 70n12 Trotsky, Leon 27, 228, 231–​32, 239 trust 100, 158 truth 3, 6–​7, 66, 112, 114, 138–​40, 142, 165–​66, 182, 185, 192–​93, 199, 209, 244, 246n22 tsarism 34, 40, 238 Turkle, Sherry 172 two-​worlds theories 135, 147, 149, 165 tyranny 25, 42, 71n15, 221, 225 Ukraine 80 United States 4, 6, 28, 30, 49, 91, 112, 115, 117 University of California, Berkeley 5 University of Chicago 5 unpredictability 19, 53, 61, 64, 173n12, 176, 178, 181, 193 See also action utilitarianism 8, 10, 13, 62, 166–​67, 172, 173n12, 225 Utopia 6, 12, 41, 177 Varese, Frederico 163 Varnhagen Rahel 150 Vienna 81 violence 3, 15–​17, 71n15, 90, 92–​93, 118, 158, 172nn3–​4, 179, 181, 183–​84, 186, 188–​89, 197–​98, 202–​7, 209–​10, 214, 216nn9–​10, 232, 234, 239, 242 concept of 200–​201 creative 202 critique of 202 instrumentalism of 197, 202–​4 intellectuals and 202 and politics 202 and power 198–​99, 203–​7, 214 and work 69, 202–​3, 205–​6

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virtue 28, 34, 50–​51, 56, 70n9, 95, 109, 160, 241 visibility 17–​18, 37, 71n20, 114, 211, 236 vita activa 12, 54 vitalism 68–​69 Von Gentz, Friedrich 114 Waffen-​SS 224 wage labor 10 Wannsee 81 Wehrmacht 224 Weimar Germany 3, 8, 10, 34, 158 West, Rebecca 5 Whimster, Sam 245n9 Wickedness 86, 88, 93, 95, 131, 137, 162 Will 13, 37, 69, 70n6, 144–​46, 148, 150, 160, 166–​67, 181, 193–​94, 227, 230 action and 148, 150, 166, 168, 230 collective 29 deliberation and 166–​67, 170 freedom of 17, 113, 145, 148 the future and 145 general 122 independence of 145 of the leader 231, 236–​37, 240 limitlessness of 230 of the masses 222, 227 revolutionary 226–​27 totalitarian 25, 29 See also Willing Willing 53, 130, 132, 144–​46, 164, 166, 170, 198, 207 will-​to-​power 146 Wilson, Edmund 5 Wily, Norbert 173n5 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 173n8 work ethic 63 work 1, 11–​13, 15, 51, 56–​59, 63–​64, 69, 70n7, 71n21, 198, 202–​6, 216n9 action and 56, 58–​59, 68, 203–​5, 214 labor and 12–​13, 54, 56–​57, 59, 70n11, 202, 206 meaning of 13, 58–​59 product of 64–​65 violence and 202, 206

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world-​building character of 203 works of art 56, 71n21, 90, 140 workers 34, 41, 44, 57, 223, 238 World War II 27, 146, 162 world-​building 203, 206 worldliness 12, 57, 59, 164, 167, 171, 197–​200, 206–​7, 214, 216n8

Yaish, Meir 163 Zahavi, Don 188 Zionism 3–​4, 76–​77, 80, 83 Znaniecki, Florian 244 Zweckrational 40