The Public, the Private, the Moral: Hannah Arendt and Political ...

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The Public, the Private, the Moral: HannahArendt and Political Morality

SUZANNE DUVALL JACOBITTI

ABSTRACT. Although Hannah Arendt never published a book on politicalmorality, she did in the later years of her life think a great deal about thestatus of morality in a post-Nietzschean era and the implications of this forpolitics. Evidence can be found both in her published works and in someof her unpublished lecture notes. Arendt struggled toward, though neverquite reached, an understanding in which politics is moderated bynonabsolutist moral principles and in which the entire range of humanrelationships is united by friendship and respect for others, providing bothpublic and private life with a moral basis.

In the wake of writing Eichmann in Jerusalem and facing the storm of controversy thatfollowed its publication, Hannah Arendt turned her attention to questions of moralityand politics. Her biographer, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, reports that Arendt

acquiesced in the suggestion of a correspondent that the book on Eichmann had beena &dquo;groundwork&dquo; for a &dquo;political morals.&dquo; While Arendt never published a treatise onpolitical morality-and indeed, I believe, never resolved to her own satisfaction theissues with which she wrestled-we do have the results of some of these struggles,some in asides in her published works and some in her unpublished paper. IAmong the latter are sets of notes for two courses dealing with morality: a lecture

course given at the New School for Social Research in 1965, entitled &dquo;Some Questionsof Moral Philosophy,&dquo; and a seminar given in 1966 at the University of Chicagoentitled &dquo;Basic Moral Propositions.,,2 In these courses, Arendt focussed squarely onthe question of the status of morality in a post-Nietzschean era and its implicationsfor politics.

Although Arendt did not reach conclusive results in these inquiries, reading themdoes shed light on some unresolved difficulties in her published works. She has beenseverely criticized for her impoverished portrait of life in the private realm (i.e.,outside politics) as well as for portraying the political realm as empty of purpose andunlimited by moral standards.’ When one reads what she says about these matters,in light of her struggle with the question of political morality, in the morality lectures,one can see a somewhat different and more attractive picture of both the public andthe private. Arendt was struggling toward, and never quite reached, an understand-

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ing in which the entire range of human relationships was united by friendship andrespect for others, which provide both public and private life with a moral basis.

If this analysis is correct, then these conclusions should be of interest not only tostudents of Arendt, but also to the many political theorists who have been

preoccupied in recent years with the problem of morality and politics. This discussionhas occurred largely in the context of the debate between liberals and their&dquo;communitarian&dquo; critics, in which liberalism is criticized for lacking an adequateaccount of the good life and of moral virtue. Most modern liberal theory has restedupon a claim of neutrality in these matters, a claim based either upon moral

scepticism (i.e. that it is impossible to defend accounts of the good) or upon theprinciple that individuals have the right to determine on their own what the good isand to pursue it in their own way, free from any political interference except what isnecessary to defend the equal ability of all to pursue that right.4 4

Against this, it has been argued that the liberal state cannot be satisfactorilyjustified without a theory of the good; that it is impossible in practice for the liberalstate to be neutral among various versions of the good life; and (perhaps mostcompelling) that a liberal state cannot survive if its citizens lack moral virtue, thatis, if they are not constrained by some moral limits on the pursuit of individualdesires, rights-claims, and visions of the good.’ To claim otherwise is, after all, tocounter the wisdom of the ages from Plato to Tocqueville that morality, and religiousbeliefs as well, are essential to political stability.The difficulty is, of course-and communitarians have no effective rebuttal to it-

that if one claims to know the good or if one insists that political stability requiresvirtuous citizens, this would seem to justify an active state role in moral and perhapsreligious education and other, perhaps extensive, limitations on individual libertyand rights. So the dilemma seems to be that a free society can survive neither withnor without an account of the good and moral virtue.As political thinkers try to work themselves out of this dilemma, they should, for

at least two reasons, find pertinent Arendt’s struggles to develop a political morality.First, the morality she was seeking was not to be based on any claim of absoluteknowledge of the good but instead rested on respect for different points of view.Second, by preserving a balance between the claims of public and of private life, itwould find a middle ground between the liberal tendency to reduce everything toindividual interests or rights and the communitarian danger of subordinating theindividual to the demands of community or civic life.

The Modern Challenge to MoralityArendt took very seriously the possibility that moral philosophy may be impossiblein the modern world. She began with the challenge posed by cultural relativism andby the Nietzschean claim that, with the &dquo;death of God,&dquo; all traditional morality diesas well. Arendt accepted Nietzsche’s view that the entire Western moral traditionfrom Plato on is dead beyond recovery. One needs, however, to be specific aboutwhat this tradition was for Arendt and hence what she believed died with it. BothPlatonic and Christian philosophy, according to Arendt, were characterized by abelief in the existence of transcendent truths known to a privileged few for whom theexperience of these truths was compelling (either because of a vision beheld by the&dquo;eye of the mind&dquo; or a voice heard by &dquo;ear&dquo; of conscience).6 For the many who didnot experience truth in this way, and hence would doubt, the truth must be imposedby the few as external standards guiding conduct and must be reinforced by the belief



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in eternal rewards and punishments (1965b: 024631).Arendt maintained that it was probably Plato who invented this myth of rewards

and punishments in the afterlife, but that the myth was adopted by the ChristianChurch at the end of the Roman Era and became part of the &dquo;trinity of religion,authority, and tradition&dquo; which buttressed the Church’s power throughout theMiddle Ages (1977: 109-111, 125-132).7 This trinity began to break down in theearly modern age with Luther, the scientific revolution, and Cartesian doubt. Thedying process was long but inevitable. Nietzsche only drew the logical consequenceswhen he pronounced the death of God and of all existing European morality. But itwas not until the twentieth century, Arendt said, that belief in an afterlife died outamong the bulk of the population in Western countries. From this time on, in herview, the traditional Graeco-Judeo-Christian idea of morality as transcendentstandards against which human conduct should be measured was effectively dead.’

This may, Arendt suggested, seem to leave us with only &dquo;morality&dquo; in its

etymological sense of &dquo;mores&dquo;-the customs, manners, and habits which moldbehavior in every society and which, of course, are relative to time and place. Modernconservative thinkers from Burke on have been careful to preserve such morality for,however indefensible it may be in logical terms, it is all that protects us fromsavagery. And indeed, contemporary communitarians seem sometimes to simplyencourage the retention and inculcation of traditional values.

Arendt had little patience with this approach. While she did not try to tear suchvalues down and did not deny that they might preserve a veneer of civility in normaltimes, she found them of no use in protecting against the extreme evil of moderntotalitarian movements. At best, the traditional moral standards became emptyclich6s which shielded people against reality. At worst, they were simply jettisonedand replaced by the moral codes of the Nazis. This was in fact what struck Arendtmost: that once moral standards were understood to be simply &dquo;values&dquo; (i.e., goodbecause people valued them) and not backed by transcendent principles or divinesanction, they were as easily interchanged as money. What people get used to issimply having rules or &dquo;values,&dquo; the content of which makes little difference. In fact,bohemians were far more likely to object to Nazism, she believed, than wererespectable, bourgeois defenders of &dquo;morality&dquo; (1965b: 024583f; 1978 I: 177).Arendt began her New School lectures with a quotation from Winston Churchill

in the 1930s to the effect that all the permanencies he had been brought up to believein had not lasted; everything he had been taught was impossible had happened. Thisto her was the basic moral experience of the twentieth century. That respectablebourgeois Germans had been able to switch to Nazi moral standards in the 1930sand back again after the war was understandable only in terms of the basic

exchangeability of moral principles once they become reduced to mere &dquo;values&dquo;

(1965b: 024585f; 1978 I: 177).

Basic Moral PropositionsIf neither transcendent standards nor traditional mores provide us sufficient

significant moral guidance, then, Arendt concluded, life must be lived &dquo;without a

banister,&dquo; without the benefit of moral absolutes to hold on to (1979: 336-337). Still,the absence of transcendent absolutes did not necessarily mean the absence of moralexperience; it did not belie the fact that people past and present do make moralchoices and may have defensible (though not absolute) grounds for making them.Arendt turned her inquiry to the past to see if there were to be found either in the



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reported experiences of those who had made difficult moral choices or in

philosophical and literary writings any clues to a secular, nontranscendent groundfor moral action.As a starting point, there was the undeniable fact that there had been individuals

who-though they did not necessarily believe in transcendent principles and thoughthe pressure of social mores was clearly against them-refused to go along withNazism and Stalinism. This seemed to Arendt a moral phenomenon worth

investigating. What underlay this refusal?’Two things struck Arendt about this: first, that there was no way to predict what

sort of person would refuse-examples were to be found among all classes,educational levels, religions, and occupations. Thus, it seemed that there might be acapacity to act morally, to tell right from wrong, in all humans. Second, those whorefused did not, Arendt claimed, typically appeal to transcendent moral laws orreligious commandments, but rather turned to an inner standard of judgment. ForArendt, the proposition that best summarizes their response is that of not being ableto live with one’s past action (1966: 024533). Arendt identified this sort of refusal tocollaborate in evil with the activity of thinking, in a very special sense of that term,as we shall sere. 10

This modern experience of refusal to acquiesce in evil has, Arendt suggested, acounterpart in the Western moral and religious tradition. If one combs this traditionfor moral principles which were not thought to rest upon transcendent standards ordivine commandments-that is, for principles which it was thought all humansshould be able to grasp with mere reason-one encounters what Arendt calls &dquo;basicmoral propositions&dquo; such as &dquo;Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done to

yourself&dquo;; or &dquo;Love thy neighbor as thyself’; or Kant’s &dquo;Act in such a way that themaxim of one’s action can be universal law&dquo; (i.e., do not make an exception foryourself) or Socrates’ &dquo;It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong&dquo; (1965b: 024586,024593).

These basic moral propositions, she argued, have two noteworthy features. First,they seem to be dictates of reason, but they cannot be proven. If one asks, why shouldI take the moral point of view, why should I love my neighbor as myself or sufferrather than do evil, reason has no satisfactory answer (1965b: 024566, 024564).Second, each of these propositions appeals back to the self, to what is good for theself-which seems paradoxical in light of the common view that the essence ofmorality is unselfishness and that self-love is sinful (1965b: 024586). ~ ~To Arendt, it was Socrates who best understood the nature of these basic moral

propositions. In the Gorgias Socrates is shown presenting the claim that it is betterto suffer than to do evil (along with two other similar claims: that it is better for anevildoer that he be punished than to go unpunished, and that the tyrant who doeswhat he pleases with impunity is unhappy). All these propositions were strikingly atodds with common Athenian opinion; and Socrates is unable to persuade his hearersof their truth, just as in the first book of the Republic, he is unable to provideconvincing arguments that one should be just even if one can get away with beingunjust (1965b: 024597f; 1978 I: 180-182). In other words, he has to live with himselfand does not want to live in such intimacy with a criminal (1965b: 024612f; 1978 I:180-182, 187-188).To Socrates, Arendt claimed, this is as far as one can go in justifying personal

morality. As she put it, &dquo;morality concerns the individual in his singularity, and thecriterion of right and wrong, the answer to the question: What ought I to do, dependsin the last analysis neither on the habits and customs, which I share with those



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around me, nor on a Command of either divine or human origin, but on what Idecide with regard to myself’ (1965b: 024598). This is the basic (and only secular)moral proposition to be derived from the Western tradition and the only place wecan begin, now that traditional morality is gone. Quoting her again: &dquo;Now today,with the breakdown of religious authority, the test is whether we are mature enoughto go back and understand the real reason for not doing wrong ... [namely] that itis better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, that it is impossible to live with a criminal,especially if he happens to be you.&dquo; 1 z

Here, then, is the result of Arendt’s preliminary mining of Western experience fora secular basis for moral conduct. We have a hypothetical imperative: if I want tobe able to live with myself, there are some things I must not do. But what thesethings are and whether I want to live with myself are entirely up to me. This seemsto have been tacitly recognized, Arendt suggested, by major thinkers throughout thetradition.l3 Life, indeed, must be lived without a banister.

Thinking and MoralityTo Arendt, this conclusion was disappointingly subjective. It did, however, havesome interesting consequences. For one thing, it explains why all the secular basicmoral propositions seem to appeal back to self-interest. The reason Socrates does notwant to be in disharmony with himself, Arendt argued, is that if he is in disharmony,he cannot think. Thus, this most basic of moral propositions is in the self-interest ofthe thinker (1965b: 024600). To be clear what she meant by this, one must be clearabout her definition of &dquo;thinking,&dquo; for this is certainly not a claim that philosophersare more prone to moral conduct than others. To think, as Arendt defined it, involvesstopping from one’s activities in the world and asking &dquo;Why am I doing this?&dquo; or&dquo;What is the meaning of what we are doing?&dquo; Thinking is, thus, something that canbe done by anybody. It is not a specialized activity best engaged in by professionals,nor does it involve the turning of the soul to contemplate eternal or divine essences;nor is it logical calculation of consequences nor the scientific quest for knowledge.Rather, it arises out of the most mundane everyday occurrences, especially thingsone has done oneself.&dquo; In other words, thinking is an inquiry into human experience,including our customary practices and moral claims and the language we use to talkabout them.

Among the many activities in which humans engage, Arendt said, only thinkingrequires internal harmony. When one is busy in the world, occupied with otherpeople, or fully engaged in some productive or laborious activity, one need not worryabout being with oneself. To think, however, is to engage in dialogue with oneself-and this is only possible if one is friends with oneself (1965b: 024614f~ .The proposition that one ought not to be in disharmony with oneself is a

hypothetical imperative for anyone who wants to think. However, Arendt said it isnot, despite its self-centeredness and subjectivity, entirely devoid of moral effect.Indeed, Arendt claimed that thinking did provide some limits against evildoing, notonly because there are some things a thinking person will not want to live with butalso because simply stopping to think means that one inquires into the reasons orjustifications for what one is being asked to do, which at least prevents one frommindlessly going along with the current. In a world in which the greatest dangersmay be mindless bureaucrats obeying orders and thoughtless conformism in society(which Arendt implied in writing of the &dquo;banality of evil&dquo;,)., this is not an insignificantmoral function (1965a).



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Still, this does not take us very far, as Arendt was well aware. Not only is the

judgment of whom or what one can live with entirely subjective, and not only doesit apply only to those who care to be thinking persons, the concern is still only withthe self. It implies neither responsibility toward other individuals nor responsibilityto take public action to correct wrongs which exist in the world. One who followsthe hypothetical imperative of the thinker leaves the responsibility for the securityand welfare of the world to others ( 1965b: 024594).15

This was Arendt’s verdict on Socrates. Socrates believed, Arendt said, that histhinking and examining activities were beneficial to Athens, but this was not why heengaged in them. He would never have given them up, whatever their effect onAthens (1965b: 024603). This was the basis of Arendt’s claim that Socrates’ case wasirrelevant to the issue of civil disobedience. 16 The civil disobedient, she claimed, actsfor a public purpose, not for the sake of her or his own conscience (1969: 58-64).From the perspective of the world, there may be more to be said for Callicles’viewpoint in the Gorgias-that since in this world one must do wrong or suffer it, thesensible person had better do it-than for Socrates’ response that for the sake of one’sown internal harmony, one had better suffer wrong (1978 I: 182). It was in thiscontext that Arendt introduced Machiavelli as a moral thinker, because, she claimed,he was the only one who took seriously the fact that in this world if you do not doevil to resist evil, &dquo;then the evildoers will do as they please&dquo; (1982:50). Machiavelli,she argued, was alone in the secular tradition in advocating positive action and herecognized that you cannot act in the world and avoid sometimes doing what youmight not like living with later. Unlike either Callicles or Socrates, however,Machiavelli said, as Arendt was fond of repeating, that he would sacrifice his ownsoul for the sake of his country (1965b: 024596; 1969: 61).Now when Arendt turned to Machiavelli, opposing his &dquo;citizen&dquo; perspective to

various &dquo;private,&dquo; &dquo;selfish&dquo; perspectives (concern for eternal salvation, for Socraticinner harmony, or for material &dquo;happiness&dquo;), she approached dangerous ground. Itis in such contexts that she made some of the &dquo;reckless&dquo; comments about politics thatlend credence to claims that her position is empty radicalism or politicalromanticism-as when she said that political action cannot be judged by moralstandards and that the only criterion for political action is greatness; and that

accomplishment in politics is only virtuosity of performance In making suchclaims, Arendt encouraged serious misunderstanding of her work.

Public, Private, Moral

Although Arendt did praise Machiavelli and public life in exaggerated terms, it wasnever her view that one should sacrifice the private self to the civic self nor did sheever deny all value to private life or envision a politics unlimited by moral principles.It is true that Arendt painted a very bleak picture of the private household in muchof her writing and contrasted this with an image of the public realm as bright,shining, and heroic. But one should not take these images too literally. It was partof Arendt’s method of writing to find exemplary cases (or ideal types) and use themto draw us away from traditional concepts which block us from seeing newexperiences clearly (from thinking what we are doing) (1978 1: 169; 1982: 76-77;1958: 193-194). We should understand her public/private dichotomy in that sense.Real households, as she was well aware, are not entirely dark or entirely devoted tothe necessities of life any more than real politics (even in ancient Greece) are brightand shining and free of necessity. These images were important to Arendt to shake



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us free of contemporary intellectual blinkers that prevent us from seeing the realdangers posed by modern society and totalitarianism.

She herself did not accept these images uncritically and was not hostile to theprivate sphere. After all, thinking occurs in private, not in public; and thinking, aswe have seen, was an essential deterrent for Arendt to that banal sort of evil whichis an ever-present threat to modern society.&dquo;3 Nor was politics free of all moralrestraints.One can pull together from Arendt’s various works a more complete and satisfying

account of political morality and of the relation between public and private than sheever worked out explicitly. This &dquo;nonwritten political morality&dquo; 19 consists, first, ofan account of moral constraints on politics and, second, of an account of friendshipas the virtue or relationship which mediates between the public and private spheres.

At various points in her work, Arendt argued that there are moral principlesinherent in the very nature of politics. In The Human Condition she identified two moralprinciples which she said emerge from the activity of politics itself the keeping ofpromises and the forgiving of transgressions. Promising-the making of commitmentsto others and then keeping them-is the central, stabilizing institution of politics andindeed of all human relationships for Arendt. Forgiving is essential because of theunpredictability of human affairs; it releases us from an otherwise endless chainreaction of revenge and hatred (1958: 236-247; 1969: 92-93). 20 In fact, she criticizedancient Greek politics-the model, in other respects, for her image of the political-for remaining &dquo;untouched by the predicament of unpredictability&dquo; and for lacking aconcept of forgiveness (1958: 194, 239).Arendt also believed that moderation and courage were intrinsically linked to

politics. Courage was an essential ingredient of action because to act with others inthe world is to initiate and to incur responsibilities for processes one cannot control.It also involves exposing oneself to the glare of the public eye, when one might havestayed safely at home. To act, therefore, requires the courage to stick one’s neck out,to emerge from the anonymity and security of private life and risk unknown

consequences (1958: 35-36).More important here, Arendt claimed that, as she put it, &dquo;the old virtue of

moderation, of keeping within bounds, is indeed one of the political virtues parexcellence; just as the political temptation par excellence is indeed hubris&dquo; (1958:191}.21 This is certainly not the voice of someone who sees no limitations on politicalaction. It is precisely this fear of hubris that caused Arendt to oppose action basedon moral absolutes, such as the Rights of Man, which was the basis of much of hercriticism of the French Revolution (1963: 79, 104). In addition, her belief inmoderation led her to distrust efforts to attempt to &dquo;do good works&dquo; in politics, toact on behalf of others.22 This is to assume that one knows what no human can know:first, what is best for another person and second, how things will turn out when oneacts in this unpredictable world. For Arendt, to take responsibility for the good ofothers, to act for rather than with them, is inherently hubristic, immoderate.Furthermore, it turns other people into objects.23 Political action involves and mustinvolve respect for the other with whom one acts and a willingness to consider andtalk about the other’s point of view. This is to acknowledge what Arendt called theplurality of the human condition, which is, for her, probably the most fundamentalmoral limitation on politics (1958: 175-176}.

Arendt linked this idea of respect for others with the Aristotelian virtue of

friendship. &dquo;Respect,&dquo; Arendt said, &dquo;not unlike the Aristotelian philia politike, is a kindof ’friendship’ without intimacy and without closeness; it is a regard for the person



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from the distance which the space of the world puts between us&dquo; (1958: 243). LikeAristotle’s friendship, Arendt’s friendship is a virtue that belongs in different waysto both political and private spheres, providing some common ground between them.One must emphasize that, when Arendt spoke of friendship, she did not mean

brotherhood or intimacy or mutual interdependence, but rather the respectful,engaged interaction-essentially in conversation-4:>f equal but different individuals.By contrast, a sense of brotherhood springs up among people in situations of

extremity, among people who are the same in their human need, as occurs amongthose in extreme poverty, or among refugees or among victims of disaster (1968: 12-17). The desire for intimacy appears as rebellion against society’s pressure to

conform, a pressure which threatens to eradicate private spaces, leading people toan excessive concern with their personal sentiments. The desire to share intimaciesreplaces genuine friendship (1958: 38-39). Arendt worried that in &dquo;dark times&dquo; likeour own, there is such a need for intimacy that people huddle with those like

themselves, fearful of conflict, perhaps tolerating those with different viewpoints butnever really listening to them or engaging them in conversation. Instead, &dquo;peopleavoid disputes and try as far as possible to deal only with people with whom theycannot come into conflict&dquo; (1968: 30-31).What is characteristic of friendship, in contrast, is an openness to other viewpoints,

a genuine discourse among people who think differently. Such conversation-whetherit is among friends or political actors--opens up a space which both separates andunites the participants, just as a table we sit around separates and unites us. Suchspaces, for Arendt, constitute a human &dquo;world&dquo; which disappears if society ornecessity press us too closely together (1958: 52-53). Describing G.E. Lessing’s viewof friendship and politics, Arendt said that human discourse &dquo;belongs to an area inwhich there are many voices and where the announcement of what each ’deems truth’both links and separates men, establishing in fact those distances between men whichtogether comprise the world.&dquo; If ever these victims were to merge into a singleopinion, then &dquo;the world, which can only form in the interspaces between men in alltheir variety, would vanish altogether&dquo; (1968: 30-31 ). Such homogenization wouldbe as fatal to politics as it is to friendship; for &dquo;the reality of the public realm relieson the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects in which thecommon world presents itself&dquo; (1958: 57).

Such homogenization would also be fatal to thinking (in Arendt’s sense of thatconcept); for friendship in her view is also a precondition for thinking. While she didnot spell it out explicitly, one might present her argument as a response to a Kantiantype of question: What are the conditions of the possibility of thinking? The responsewould proceed as follows: thinking, the internal dialogue with oneself, presupposesspeech-that is conversation. Conversation clearly presupposes another person withwhom to converse. The &dquo;guiding experience&dquo; here, Arendt suggested, is &dquo;friendshipand not selfhood; I first talk with others before I talk with myself, examining whateverthe joint talk may have been about, and then discover that I can conduct a dialoguenot only with others but with myself as well&dquo; (1978 I: 189; 1968: 84-85). And thistalk with others which precedes thinking presupposes that one respects the

&dquo;otherness,&dquo; the difference of that partner in conversation.Thinking as internal dialogue with oneself, respect for the other, friendship,

plurality-these constituted for Arendt a cluster of inseparable concepts. To think islike conversing with a friend; to converse with a friend is like having another self(1978 1: 189). It was, after all, conversing that Socrates, Arendt’s model thinker,refused to give up for Athens; he could have thought in silence (1966: 028617). The



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true thinker constantly broadens the circle of partners in conversation, just as

Socrates indicated he would wish to do even in an afterlife (1963: 128). Thus, Arendtconcluded that the &dquo;inherent duality [of Socratic thought] points to the infiniteplurality which is the law of the earth&dquo; (1978: 1$7).24The plurality, the &dquo;space of the world,&dquo; sustained by friendship and mutual

respect, is what preserves the balance, in Arendt’s thought, between public andprivate. Whereas the private individual (including the thinker) cares for personalinterest and the citizen cares for country, Arendt would balance both perspectiveswith care for &dquo;the world,&dquo; which is neither self nor other but the space between, aspace which will only exist as long as thinking friends or colleagues in political actionexist.

Friendship understood in this way, then, humanizes both the public and privatespheres. The claims of country on individual are always limited by the understandingthat a country which does not preserve plurality, public spaces, has no claims at all(except, if it is one’s own country, to cause regret). Friendship also-and this is oftenmissed by readers of Arendt-humanizes the household. Friendship can exist in thehousehold between man and wife-as it certainly did between Arendt and herhusband Heinrich Blucher and between Karl Jaspers and his wife, of whose marriageArendt said, &dquo;If two people do not succumb to the illusion that the ties binding themhave made them one, they can create a world anew between them&dquo; (1968: 78) .25 Italso can exist to an extent among parents and children; for as soon as a child is bornto lovers, Arendt insisted, a space is created between them and they take on theresponsibility to prepare the child not just for survival but to live as a thinking, actingperson in &dquo;the world&dquo; (1958: 242). The criticism Arendt had of the ancient household(and of the modern society which incorporates its worst features) is not that it is

private but that there is too little space among persons, too little opportunity fordifferent points of view and for respect among equals. To the extent such things donot exist within the household, to that extent the household is impoverished.26

For Arendt, then, a fully human life requires the existence of both public andprivate spheres. Such spheres certainly require legal protection, she believed. Lawshould guarantee a right to private property (not necessarily to pursue wealth, butcertainly to have a physical place of one’s own to which to retreat) and basic rightsof citizenship (1958: 70-72).27 The tragedy of political refugees-the homelesspeoples of the twentieth century-is that they had neither public nor private spacesand hence were deprived of the plurality of the human condition. For this reason,Arendt regarded the right to have rights, to be a citizen of some country, as possiblythe only human right (1951: 290-302).But legal protection is not enough. Also essential is that a widely shared

commitment to certain political &dquo;virtues&dquo; exist if the intangible spaces among peopleare to be maintained and a boundary between public and private protected.Individuals must have the courage at times to act and must respect the commitmentsor promises to others that action entails. They must also avoid immoderate, hubristicassumptions about what can be achieved through action and must be willing toforgive unanticipated consequences. Above all, individuals must respect human

plurality, the uniqueness of every other human being, and cultivate friendship in thesense explained above. These &dquo;Arendtian&dquo; virtues are not &dquo;moral absolutes&dquo; whichcould be formally demonstrated or which have transcendent validity. Such certaintiesare not possible for us. But they do rest on a coherent vision of the human condition,one that is compatible with a liberal polity. Because Arendt’s political morality isnot based on claims to absolute knowledge but instead on respect for differences



290

among individuals and the necessity for privacy, it cannot be regarded as a threatto individual freedom. Hence it does not seem subject to the criticisms oftenaddressed by liberals to communitarians. Yet it does provide an account of morallimits and of civic virtue which could be used to strengthen liberal political theory.

Notes

1. See Young-Bruehl (1982:374-376). It is possible, though far from certain, that the

projected final volume of The Life of the Mind, entitled "Judging," would have been sucha treatise. See Beiner (1982: 89-156), Gray (1979: 225), Denneny (1979), and Benhabib(1988). I would like here to acknowledge that I have benefited from the critical commentsof Ronald Beiner, Jerome Kohn, John Danley, Ronald Terchek, and Stephen DeLue, whoread earlier drafts of this article.

2. Arendt’s typed lecture notes for these courses are with her papers in the Library ofCongress. These notes are not in very good order. Some of the material in these lectureswas incorporated into Arendt (1982) and (1978), but not as an argument about morality.

3. See, e.g., Kateb (1983), Elshtain (1981: 53-59), and Pitkin (1981).4. Such liberals include John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and many others. For a critical

analysis, see Dunn (1985: 159f).5. This has been one of the arguments of the communitarian critics of liberalism, such as

Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Robert Bellah. For criticaldiscussions of this literature, see Gutmann (1985) and Rosenblum (1987: ch. 7).

6. For the Greeks, the metaphor for the direct experience of transcendent truth is visual, asin Plato’s parable of the cave or Pythagoras’s spectator. For the Hebrews, the metaphoris auditory; one hears the voice of God. The sensory metaphor emphasizes the compellingnature of such experiences. One cannot doubt what one sees with one’s own eyes or hearswith one’s own ears. See Arendt (1965b: 024630; 1978 I: 6-9, 119).

7. See also Arendt (1953: 122-124).8. This argument is found throughout Arendt’s published works and in the morality lectures.

John Gunnell (1979: 45-51; and 1986) has commented critically on Arendt’s contributionto what he calls the "myth of the tradition.’

9. Arendt (1966: 024533). McKenna (1984: 348) says Arendt never asked the question: Whatkind of ethics would have prevented the "horrifying conformism" of an Adolph Eichmann?This is simply not correct. McKenna may not be satisfied with the outcome of her inquiry,but this was a dominant question in Arendt’s thought from the mid-1960s on.

10. She also sometimes used the term "conscience" but only after making it very clear thatshe meant neither the voice of God within us (as "conscience" has meant in much ofWestern tradition) nor a feeling of guilt (as the term is often used in modern psychology).Arendt was not seeking the causes of moral sentiments, but secular moral principles. Afeeling of guilt can come about because old habits conflict with new commands; but suchfeelings only reflect conformity or noncomformity, not morality (1965b: 024603-4). Thenon-collaborators followed their "consciences," Arendt said, in the sense that to themcertain moral propositions seemed "self-evident." Since this self-evidence did not seem tobe a matter of Platonic vision or fear of divine sanctions or guilt, it was of great importanceto understand this modern phenomenon of conscience. This was the guilding question ofthe seminar on basic moral propositions (1966: 024533 and passim). Not everyone willagree with Arendt’s interpretations of the reasons for noncollaboration. For example,McKenna (1984) argues that it was precisely the moral absolutists, and especially religiousones, who refused to cooperate with Nazis and Stalinists. This conflict cannot be

adequately addressed here.11. Arendt notes that the etymology of "conscience" supports this reference to the self ( 1965b:

024586; 1971: 418).12. Quoted from a student’s notes in Young-Bruehl (1982: 366). As Arendt put it, we must

start with Socrates and "strike out on our own" (1966: 024616). Much of this analysis of



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Socrates, thinking, and morality appeared in Arendt (1971) and was later incorporatedinto Arendt (1978 I).

13. Arendt found similar ideas in Democritus, Cicero, Eckhart, Kant, Spinoza, Shakespeare,Nietzsche, and Dostoyevsky. Kant, Arendt claimed, confuses things by presenting hisprinciple as a command (categorical imperative), but this is a self-misunderstanding.Really, she said, his claim is that if one doesn’t want to contradict oneself (and hence livein disharmony with oneself), one ought not to make an exception for oneself (1965b:024567f)

14. It is, literally, as she put it in The Human Condition (1958: 5), "thinking what we are doing."In The Life of the Mind, Arendt (1978 I: passim) distinguished among (a) "thinking" (theinternal dialogue, which inquires into the meaning of experience); (b) "intellect" (whichis basically calculation and which in combination with sense perception, seeks knowledge;and (c) "contemplation" (the awed wonder at the cosmos or rapt vision or hearing of thetranscendent). Arendt attributed this concept of "thinking" to Socrates and Plato, forwhom the thinking self is portrayed as a two-in-one, in which the self questions itself andanswers its own questions. Hence the requirement that it be friends with itself (1978 I:ch. 18; see also Arendt 1971). She suggested that the reason moral philosophy has noadequate name ("ethics" and "morals" are derived from terms for customs and mores) isits close association with thinking, so the thinker cannot think of inquiry into morality asa specialized subject apart from thinking itself (1965b: 024632).

15. Having reached this point in the morality lectures, Arendt seems to have becomesidetracked by discussions of the will and judgment. While the material on judgment(much of it published in Arendt (1982)) does pertain to morality and politics, that on thewill (mostly published in Arendt (1978 II) obscures the possibility of moral responsibility,as I have argued elsewhere (Jacobitti: 1988).

16. See Kateb (1983: 96f) for an important criticism.17. See esp. Arendt (1958: 205) and (1977: 153). Kateb (1983: 33) calls these "moments of

recklessness." To be fair, when Arendt says that only "behavior" and not political actioncan be judged by "moral standards," she puts the latter two words in quotation marks,implying that she means mere "mores," not the basic moral principles associated withthinking (1958:205).

18. Thinking involves a withdrawal into oneself and away from "the world." In this sense,thinking occurs in "private." There is, of course, no guarantee that thinking will go onjust because there is privacy.

19. In her lectures on Kant, Arendt presented Kant’s "nonwritten political philosophy" (1982:19). George Kateb (1983: 33-40) acknowledges, but dismisses as inadequate, some of themoral ideas discussed below. Kateb does not, I believe, do justice to Arendt here; but todeal fully with his very thoughtful arguments goes beyond the scope of this article.

20. Sometimes, as Benhabib (1988: 46) says, Arendt wrote as though politics and moralitywere utterly dichotomous phenomena. At other times (as when she calls promising andforgiving moral principles guiding politics), she did not. She was simply not consistenthere (the inconsistency shows up throughout the two sets of morality lectures); however,it is consistent with her overall position to see politics as limited by morality as long asmorality does not mean traditional mores or transcendent standards.

21. Some of Arendt’s virtues seem Aristotelian. In the two sets of lectures on morality, Arendtdisregarded Aristotle’s Ethics on the grounds that he makes ethics part of politics and thathis virtues are morally neutral (1965b: 024571; 1966: 024530). Her treatment of Aristotleraises interesting questions which go beyond the scope of this article.

22. See her discussion of Billy Budd (1963: 76-80) and of Jesus’ teachings (1958: 74-77).23. Which in Arendt’s language is to substitute "making" for "action" (1958: 226; 1977: 110-

111).24. Thus, Socratic thought requires the "enlarged mentality" Arendt described in her Kant

lectures (1982: 71-73). The irreducible gap which Benhabib (1988: 71-73) sees betweenArendt’s view of morality (as internal harmony of the thinker) and the enlarged mentalityArendt finds in Kant’s nonwritten political philosophy is in fact closed in Arendt’s concept



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of friendship. It must be conceded, however, that Arendt is simply not consistent here, asRonald Beiner has pointed out to me, citing Arendt (1978 II: 200), where Arendtemphasizes the solitary nature of thought, almost directly contradicting the passage citedabove from 1978 I: 187.

25. See Young-Bruehl (1982) for an account of the Arendt-Blucher marriage. A full

understanding of Arendt’s concept of friendship would require analysis of her doctoraldissertation on Augustine’s concept of love. See Scott (1988).

26. In a revealing comment, Arendt noted that the wife of the head of the household in ancientGreece, because she had to stay within the household, never met her equal; this has tomean that such women were deprived of friendship; it is not an endorsement of the ancienthousehold (1958: 72n).

27. Arendt said that the rise of the public realm in ancient times "occurred at the expense ofthe private realm of family and household" (1958: 29) and she praised the Romans, whodid not sacrifice private to public but understood "that these two realms could exist onlyin the form of coexistence" (1958: 59).

References

Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism (Rev. ed. 1968). New York: Harcourt, Brace& Co.

Arendt, H. (1953). "Religion and Politics," Confluence II: 105-126.Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Arendt, H. (1963). On Revolution. New York: Viking.Arendt, H. (1965a). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Rev.). New York:

Viking.Arendt, H. (1965b). "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy." Lecture course given at the New

School for Social Research. With Arendt Papers, Library of Congress.Arendt, H. (1966). "Basic Moral Propositions." Lecture course at the University of Chicago.With Arendt Papers, Library of Congress.

Arendt, H. (1968). Men in Dark Times. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Arendt, H. ( 1969). Crises of the Republic. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Arendt, H. (1971). "Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture." Social Research 38: 417-

446.

Arendt, H. (1977) Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin.Arendt, H. (1978). The Life of the Mind (M. McCarthy, ed.). New York: Harcourt BraceJovanovich.

Arendt, H. (1979) "On Hannah Arendt." In M.A. Hill (1979: 301-339).Arendt, H. (1982). Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. (R. Beiner, ed.). Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.Beiner, R. (ed.) (1982) "Interpretative Essay." In H. Arendt: Lectures on Kant’s Political

Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Benhabib, S. (1988) "Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics in Arendt’s Thought."

Political Theory 16: 29-51.Denneny, M. (1979). "The Privilege of Ourselves: Hannah Arendt on Judgment." In M.A.

Hill (1979: 245-274).Dunn, J. (1985). "The Future of Liberalism." In Rethinking Modern Political Theory. 154-170.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Elshtain, J. (1981). Public Man, Private Woman. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Gray, G. (1979). "The Abyss of Freedom and Hannah Arendt." In Hill (1979: 225-244).Gunnell, J. (1979). Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop

Publishers.Gunnell, J. (1986). Between Philosophy and Politics: The Alienation of Political Theory. Amherst,MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Gutmann, A. (1985). "Communitarian Critics of Liberalism." Philosophy and Public Affairs 308-322.



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Hill, M.A. (ed.) (1979). Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World. New York: St. Martin’sPress.

Jacobitti, S.D. (1988). "Hannah Arendt and the Will." Political Theory 16: 53-76.Kateb, G. (1983). Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanhead.

McKenna, G. (1984). "Bannisterless Politics: Hannah Arendt and Her Children." History ofPolitical Thought V: 333-360.

Pitkin, H. (1981). "Justice: On Relating Public and Private." Political Theory 9: 327-352.Rosenblum, N. (1987). Another Liberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Scott, J.V. "A Detour Through Pietism: Hannah Arendt on St. Augustine’s Concept of

Freedom." Polity XX: 394-425.Young-Bruehl, E. (1982). Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University

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Biographical NoteSUZANNE DUVALL JACOBITTI is Professor of Political Science at Southern IllinoisUniversity at Edwardsville and teaches courses in political theory. She has publishedarticles in Political Theory and Western Political Quarterly and is currently working on abook on Hannah Arendt’s political thought. ADDRESS: Department of PoliticalScience, Box 1453, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL62026, U.S.A.



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