CHAPTER
SEVEN
ARENDT: SOCIALITY and COMMUNITY ON ITS
OWN TERMS
INTRODUCTION
Up to this point the topic of community and sociality has
been approached through the work of other academics, aspects
of their work having been described and located both within
the current debate, and within the tradition typifying
social science ‘investigation’ of community.
It is now time for me to lay my cards on the table and to
suggest a non-mechanistic approach capable of understanding
sociality and community without reference to any pre-empting
idealism or abstraction.
The first step involves a radical reading of the work of
Hannah Arendt, in particular, her most important work, ‘The
Human Condition’ (1958 hereafter referred to as THC). It is
argued that this work offers the theoretical perspective for
precisely the anti-mechanistic, anti-metaphysical re-
188
ordering of community and sociality which is the aim of this
book.
Arendt’s work is central to this search firstly because she
provides a de-constructive reading of metaphysical and
mechanistic constructions of the social and secondly,
because her work suggests a way beyond the inherently
oppositional post-modernist accounts.
Arendt achieves this because her attacks upon the Cartesian
and mechanistic viewpoint are not confined simply to the
essential subjecti, but specifically address the dis-
empowering of the social and social being-ness. Furthermore,
through various methods which we will briefly examine, she
explicitly positions her work outside traditional
philosophical confines, refusing a simple reversal of values
and constructing instead an inter-relational picture of the
social, where the safeguarding of an open and communal
social space is the highest priorityii.
A close reading of THC reveals the following –
189
A skeletal outline of a multi faceted - that
is a constructive as well as an oppositional
- approach to a de-centred human-being-ness.
The basis for an anti-metaphysical and anti-
mechanistic approach to sociality in both
its micro and macro manifestations.
And this is what – in the interest of the
overriding aim - this chapter intends to
illustrate.
Mainstream Readings
The reading of Arendt this chapter will develop goes against
the grain of the vast majority of work on Arendt. In part
this is because I concentrate upon one book, but primarily
because I view THC as a coherent anti-metaphysical project.
It is my claim that much of what passes for work on Arendt
misunderstands her overall purpose, in part because of the
strangeness of her work and in part because many
commentators ‘pick and choose’ from a partial appreciation
of her work (Villa D. 1996 p4). As a result academics
complain her work is difficult (Villa D. op cit p4), that
190
she is obtuse and contradictory. This has led some
commentators to suggest quite strongly that the problem lies
with Arendt herself (Kaleb G. 2000 p134; Zaretsky Eli 1997
p207; Pitkin H.F. 1998 p11). As such while many commentators
pay lip service to her influence especially in relation to
her famous discussions on power, the sum of this lip service
rarely amounts to more than a few lines (Torfing J. op cit.
p166 is typical of this). All of which I would like to
demonstrate; unfortunately there are word limits. What needs
to be said however is that contrary to many critics
(Benhabib S. 1996; Pitkin H.F.1998; Moruzzi Norma Clare
2000; Zaretsky Eli op cit) I feel there is a cohesive
wholeness and foundation to THC as a work and that the
structure and ordering of THC perfectly mirror Arendt's
thematic purpose.
As such this chapter intends to engage with Arendtian
concerns principally connected with her approach to
community and sociality. The sum of these topics supports
the claim that Arendt provides the fundamental cornerstone
for a de-centred modelling of sociality and community.
191
Arendt’s Radicality: her anti-metaphysical and anti-mechanistic project
“I have clearly joined the ranks of those who......have
been attempting to dismantle metaphysics and philosophy with
all its categories as we have known them from their
beginnings in Greece until today” (quoted in Villa 1996 op
cit p163). In these terms Arendt announces the focus of her
lifetime project. Given ‘THC’ was published in 1958 this aim
linked her specifically, to the then still highly suspect
work of isolated thinkers, such as Nietzsche and Heidegger.
She is thus contained within a European, not an American
philosophical tradition.
So what can be said generally about Arendt's anti-
metaphysical and anti-mechanistic project? Initially, it can
be noted that in contrast to Foucault who attacks
metaphysics by studying its effects and revealing their
political nature and origins, Arendt attacks it by
overturning the Platonic privileging of thought over action
(Arendt 1958 p222), the privileging of the “cosmic and the
universal, as distinguished from the terrestrial and the
“natural” (ibid various p268 also p263-265).
192
Indeed, THC can be read as an historical investigation of
the means through which action is conceptually transformed
into a mode of making, how it is theoretically established
within the western tradition as secondary to thought and
furthermore, how this privileging of idealism and
abstractions (ibid p263/4, p267, p272), has separated human
beings from their own social being-ness.
THC describes how the terminology of political theory and
political thought (ibid 229) sustains the primacy allocated
to thought over actioniii through a regime of articulation
built upon mechanistic and metaphysical privileging. It also
allows Arendt to make clear that these regimes of
articulation are not simply sustained by the separation of
noun and verb, object and acting, but also by the privileging of
abstraction over being-in-the world as a means of explaining the world (ibid
p321). This abstraction - which Arendt terms process (ibid
p296/297) sustains the privileging of idealism and thought
over worldly and social existence (ibid p318, p276),
constructs and maintains the ‘Cartesian community’ and
regulates and ‘disappears’ the social.
193
This is what Arendt means when she says that she is
interested in the relation of the men and the earth, not Man
and life (ibid p318). For Man, and indeed life, in this
latter sense, are abstractions.
Against the primacy of abstraction, the privileging of
essences and process, Arendt asserts the inter-relational
plural being-ness of the world (ibid p321). Essences and
universalism are creations of the mind (ibid p268ff), they
are the manifestations of the elevation of labouring which
creates a ‘dimmed downed world” (Villa. op cit p138); they
dull and remove the world from us, just as they remove us
i There is also an issue about generic designation in relation to theappropriate term for human beings both in the singular and the general.Because the term ‘subject’ is implicated in the Althusserian, postAlthusserian, structuralist and post structuralist turn to discourse,and because I desire to make a break with the focus and form of thatmode of analysis, human beings will be referred to in their singularform as ‘person’, and in their generality simply as ‘human beings’.Arendt herself uses the words ‘man’ and ‘men’ as a generic term forhuman beings, but in 2002 this cannot be sustained. I will continue touse the word men where Arendt contrasts it to Man because this has aspecific sense within Arendt's text, a sense I wish to maintain. Thenon-essentialised Arendtian person is referred to as the ‘who’; and onceagain for similar reasons, this is a usage I will abide by.ii Clearly it is beyond the scope of this book’s purpose to investigate fully either the vast scope of Arendt’s work or to examine in any depth the entire gamut of the philosophical underpinnings of her anti-metaphysical project. Villa (1994) and Studdert (2003 thesis unpublished) provide more detail regarding this aspect.iii I will discuss the implications of formal and theoreticalimplications Arendt’s choice of the vita activa in the next majorsection.
194
from the world (Arendt op cit p321). They are the single
truth of the household that denies the plurality of ‘truths’
and the possibility of agreement and co-operation (ibid
p45), they are the notion of fabrication which constructs
and values everything entirely from an instrumental
perspective and which concurrently, elevates the maker and
the final product above the actual lived experience and act
of making. It is the Platonic philosophical tradition which
by constructing, action as secondary to thought has reduced
action to an unproblematic, instrumental making facility
(Villa op cit p109), a transcendental ideal beyond a realm
of human affairs (Arendt 1958 op cit p292, Villa Dana. 1996
op cit p116).
By her choice of the vita activa, activities in the world,
activities open to all humans as a condition of their being-
ness, Arendt asserts the primacy of being-ness - the ‘who we
are’ (Arendt H. 1958 p10) over the metaphysical idealised
explanations of ‘What we are” (ibid). For this reason Arendt
refuses the comfort of any abstraction, be it psychologism
(see her attack on urges ibid p321 and subjectivism ibid
195
p284), philosophy (ibid p292) or indeed any form of
metaphysics (ibid p262/3); and she has does this because
nothing entitles us to believe that man has a nature, an
essence (ibid p10) or a psychology, and because all of these
idealisms (“products of thought”) are reductive of worldly
experience to thought. All of which explains her opposition
to the primacy of cognitivism, rationality, and Cartesian
doubt (ibid p267/297 and p318 for examples of this though it
permeates everything she wrote). Of course Arendt does not
oppose thought per se, simply the manner in which Platonic
and Cartesian thought pre-constructs the social for us: a
construct which, as it were, refuses human being-ness and
the action that creates being-ness, access to it. Against
this Arendt continually asserts the primacy of lived
experience, the individuality of experience, the social
being of existence and crucially the inter-relationality of
experience (ibid p321 where the two sit side by side).
But this represents only the oppositional half of her
project. By posing the question ‘who we are’ rather ‘what we
are’, Arendt reverses the traditional western philosophical
196
standard which inscribes thought with prescriptive power
over action (Villa 1996 op cit p160) and overturns the
traditional de-coupling of thought from action. Yet this
reversal represents more than a simple theoretical re-
privileging. Quite the contrary for even action is contained
and expressed through other interlinked conditions such as
labour, work and plurality. It is the inter-relational
perspectives within which her picture of the social is
expressed, rather than simply her stress on action alone,
which enunciates Arendt's work as truly radical.
So this reading disputes the many critics who describe
Arendt as simply privileging action in a direct substitution
with thought (D’Entreves, Maurizio Passerin. 1994), indeed,
that such a reading simply recreates the primacy of
abstraction that Arendt is seeking to overturn. I believe a
more accurate reading of THC would describe it not as a
privileging of action, but rather as describing a theory of
inter-relationality. Arendt's world is a social world, a
common relational world where human beings are a conditioned
and conditioning force, where action, freedom and identity
197
are all limited and conditioned by the world and by their
own location within a web of relationships; where if action
endows the world with meaning, it does so as an outcome of
the fundamental conditionality of all human being-ness.
Where whatever truth is established, is established by the
presence of others people, who confirm the reality of
ourselves to ourselves (Arendt 1958 op cit p95; Hill Melvyn
(ed) p293/294).
Thus the intellectual philosophical game where one
abstraction replaces another and absolute truth is
maintained is precisely what Arendt's project avoids. So as
Villa observes (Villa Dana. (ed) 2000 p8), her criticism is
aimed not at work as such, or the social as such, or
labouring or even thought, but rather at the
universalisation of a particular set of attitudes and the
manner in which the Western tradition’s elevation of thought
has blurred the distinctions and articulations within the
vita activa (Arendt op cit p17). The result is that far from
simply re-constructing a new piece of solid ground through
which the frailty and relativity of human existence can be
198
concealed anew, Arendt actually performs quite the contrary
act, and elevates the frailty, relativity, open ended,
relational, and uncontrollable nature of being-ness, against
the entire Platonic philosophical tradition and the
abstraction it champions. A step which is vital to maintain
the dual status of her anti-metaphysical and anti
mechanistic project, for of course in ‘privileging’
interrelationality she brings to light precisely those
linkages and hybrids which Latour claims mechanistic theory
suppresses (Latour op cit p 37).
Explicit within Arendt's interrelation project is a
concurrent ontological shift from the privatized self
towards a self constituted by disclosure, action, and co-
operation and this shift is also creative of a new form of
power, a form not simply based on conflictual imperatives. A
move which bypasses the simply mono-causal linkage of the
subject/state axis examined in chapter five in which the
individual and the state are established as the exclusive
mode of political being.
199
Having established the terms of her project, what is needed
now is to detail its creative and particular manifestation
within specific categories. Naturally it is the argument
that these categories are reflective of, and contained
within, an over riding set of principles, and that as such
the distinction and separation performed is entirely
procedural.
A good place to commence is with a simple description of the
structure of THC, beginning with the prologue.
The Prologue opens with a discussion of reactions to the
contemporaneous launching of the sputnik, immediately
locating the work as concerned with the modern world. In
discussing this event Arendt singles out what she terms a
general feeling of relief that man can finally remove his
earthly chains. Crucially however, Arendt does not say that
the material reality produces these reactions, but rather
that this ‘new condition of being’ is an outcome of man’s
anticipation (Arendt 1958 op cit p2). Thus the sputnik and
the possibilities it presents to leave the being-ness of
200
life on earth, are manifestations of a culture whose deepest
desire is to escape the human condition (ibid).
Arendt immediately presents us therefore with a world where
experience has been reduced to two mutually exclusive modes
of being - subjective experience and the objective
constructions of modern science. Each of these modes is
based upon different versions of speech and politics; what
is more they are mutually exclusive. Arendt locates both
these themes within an historical perspective (ibid p2) and
establishes them as ‘political questions’ (ibid p3). By
doing so she announces that her criticism does not derive
from any simple foundational nostalgia. Nor does she have
the answer. This immediate disavowal of an Archimedean
point, of any claim to ultimate truth, also very subtly
enunciates her perspective as inherently anti-mechanistic,
as does the statement that whatever the answer to these
problems, it can only be decided by the ‘agreement of many’,
not by either theoretical considerations, or on the basis of
individual opinion (ibid p5). Thus the work is immediately
announced as an inter-relational project, positioned in the
201
social and opposed to the primacy of abstraction and
individual subjectivism as the means for explaining the
social. In this context what follows immediately is an
explicit statement positioning her work as concerned with
contemporaneous being-in-the-world.
“what I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing
more than to think what we are doing. “What we are doing”
is indeed the central theme of this book” (ibid p5). A
statement which almost irresistibly recalls Foucault’s
famous and often quoted statement of his purpose. While I do
not intend to examine the differences and similarities
between the two, I would suggest a comparison is instructive
and revealing.
Arendt then spells out the proposed topics of the book.
These topics - “a discussion of labour, work and action -
(the Vita activa)” (ibid) - have been chosen so Arendt makes
clear, because they “are within the range of every human
being” (ibid). What is important is the explicit positioning
of the work as an investigation into, and contained by, the
lived actuality of all human being-nessiv.
202
INTER-RELATIONALITY
It is these three conflated steps - her location of her
project outside philosophical boundaries, her stress upon
plurality and the social as over and above the individual
and finally, her stress on the inter-relationality of the
social that distinguish THC from apparently similar work of
Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault. This is a giant step and
it allows Arendt not only to escape the trap of extreme
subjectivism and aestheticism which imprisons Nietzsche for
instance (Villa 1996 op cit p103ff) but also allows her
project to be more than simply oppositional.
That this is intentional becomes clear in a passage pregnant
with more than simple philosophical generalities.
‘Academic philosophy... has .. been dominated by the never
ending reversals of idealism and materialism, of
transcendentalism and immanentism, of realism and
nominalism, of hedonism and asceticism and so on. What
matters here is the reversibility of all these systems, that
iv That is why thought as a particular category is specifically excludedfrom the list of topics that THC will focus upon (ibid p5); it is not afundamental condition of human life.
203
they can be “turned “upside down” or “downside up” without
requiring for such reversals either historical events or
changes in the structural elements involved. ....... ..It is
still the same tradition the same intellectual game with
paired antitheses that rules, to an extent, the famous
modern reversals of spiritual hierarchies, such as Marx’s
turning Hegelian dialectic upside down, or Nietzsche’s
revaluation of the sensual and natural as against the
supernatural” (Arendt 1958 p293 also p17 where she says the
same thing). Furthermore, in a passage at the end of the
chapter she explicitly states that her
“use of the term vita activa presupposes that the concerns
underlying all its activities ........ is neither superior
or inferior to the central concerns of the Vita
contemplativa” (ibid p17). This is vital, for if Arendt was
to postulate one as superior to the other, then a simple
reversal would be the limits of what she does perform. And
the fact that she does not do perform a simple reversal is
why I claim Arendt’s project is superior to Nietzsche’s, and
indeed any other anti-metaphysical project.
204
Therefore, while Arendt may oppose the Cartesian individual
(ibid p279), her target is much wider than one philosophical
totem. Thus what I seek to establish, is the means by which
Arendt’s interrelationality establishes the basis for an
empowered reading of community, in clear contradistinction
to the currently articulated regimes of knowledge utilised
by the human sciences.
Following the introduction, the first two chapters map the
terms of our human being-ness, the human condition and the
activities of the vita activa which personify human being-ness
within the conditioning frame of the world. Thus the vita
activa is discussed initially in relation to life (ibid p7-
11), then in relation to philosophy (ibid p12-17), and
finally in relation to space (ibid chapter two). The dual
effect of this examination is firstly to locate the trinity
of labour work and action as simultaneously conjoined
activities and conditions of existence, and secondly, to
elevate doing and being as the fulcrum of Arendt's
investigation.
205
Examining the first point in more detail, it can be seen
that the first chapter is devoted to establishing the
components of the vita activa both as activities and as
conditions of being. Within this examination, labour, work
and action while they are distinguished, are not presented
as separate, ideal categories, rather they are
painstakingly, mutually, interlinked. They are shown as
having what I will term, a passive and an active form. The
passive form situates them as present prior to birth, we are
born into them and agreement is demanded as a condition of
our being-ness. The active meaning is the meaning created by
some degree of human input.
Therefore, while initially, Arendt links each of them with a
condition of life (ibid p7), a closer reading of the
relevant section (ibid p7-11) shows that they are positioned
and established inter-relationally. So the activities -
labour, work and action are, alongside natality, mortality,
worldliness, life itself and plurality, all implicated as
conditions of life in the conditioned existence of men (ibid
p9). They are present at birth. For instance all men have to
206
provide in some form or other, through some means or other,
for their biological needs. Men must either labour
themselves or have someone else do it (ibid p176). Labour as
the satisfaction of biological needs, is thus, just as much
a condition of human being-ness, as natality, plurality, or
mortality. Labour is not simply, or exclusively, a
materially enunciated set of activities, rather labour is
whatever is done predominantly to satisfy biological needs
(ibid 84). Thus, at one level, any activity could
potentially qualify as labouring if it is undertaken
principally to serve these ends. If this were not the case
then Arendt's classification of modernity as a society where
principles of labouring have permeated every activity would
simply have no meaning. Similarly, while Arendt initially
states that action belongs to the human condition of
plurality (ibid p175) she also says that ‘action has the
closest connection with the human condition of natality
(ibid p9). Natality is, it should be noted, also present in
politics (ibid) which has as its specific condition,
plurality (ibid p7). Furthermore, action would be
207
unnecessary without plurality (ibid p8). While “action is
inherent in all human activities” (ibid p9) it is also a
condition of being which man cannot escape (ibid p208). This
configuration of course postulates action as a contained
within an inter-relational web, and thus impervious to
mechanistic essentialisms, polarities and demarcations such
as conscious/unconscious, structure/agency and so forth. In
this vein Arendt does not say that plurality is the
exclusive condition of politics, but rather that it is the
specific condition, just as the difference between labour
and work is based on a contextual judgment, not an essential
definition.
Thus chapter one establishes the vita activa as implicated
within all practices - discursive and material - and all
activities, subjective and objective. Chapter one also
locates the vita activa in the history of western philosophy.
Thus the insertion of the vita activa into the Platonic
philosophical framework, establishes it as a means by which
western philosophy, and the human sciences as regimes of
208
articulation for the organisation of sociality and social
power, can be examined in a historically specific manner.
The second chapter introduces the spatial placement of
labour, work and action through its introduction of public
and private space, and by the mapping of this social space,
as the manifestation and spatialisation of these three
fundamental practices.
Here for the first time the twin focus of Arendt's work
becomes clear. For labour, work and action exist within the
world of human being-ness, they are conditions of human
being-ness, which condition, and are conditioned in turn by
the world; that is the stress in her account falls upon the
linkages which are described as mutually constituting. They
are activities and actions through which systems of thought
become concrete but which also exist as particular action(s)
prior to systems of thought. In turn as action and as speech
as action, the vita activa illuminates the conditions under
which the social human being-ness is theoretically
enunciated. Each of these human conditions has a conjoint
positioning within thought, practice and space, which is in
209
relation both to the world of men and to the world of nature
(ibid p23). What is more this positioning is subjective and
objective, as well as historically specific. This historical
placement is crucial in establishing the non-essential
status of Arendt’s examination.
The next three chapters deal individually with each of the
three components of Arendt’s focus, charting the historical
movement and positioning of each practice within the
contemporaneous social and within the philosophical
hierarchy. Finally, the last chapter serves to answer
Arendt's initial question, by placing the vita activa within a
contemporary perspective.
THE ELEMENTS OF ARENDT’S APPROACH TO THE SOCIAL
Introduction
I have argued throughout that Arendt attempts to unite what
she herself describes as the “curious discrepancy between
the world orientated, “objective” language we speak and the
man orientated, subjective theories we use in our attempts
at understanding” (ibid p94).
210
Having, hopefully established the general terms for Arendt’s
project in THC, what is needed now is to turn to the
possibilities she offers for a theoretically elaborated,
post-mechanistic articulation of community.
Arendt is clearly trying to think of being-ness in a non-
sovereign, worldly way (Villa Dana. 1996 op cit p118) and as
such she wants, not simply to construct an oppositional
logic, but to reconfigure the social world (Curtis K.1999
p16). The task of this section then, is to draw from
Arendt’s work, the elements useful for a theoretically
empowered articulation of the social. I would argue that
there are three elements within the THC crucial to any
attempt to establish a post-mechanistic model of the social.
These three elements are
Plurality
Certain elements from her description of
action
Most importantly the entire notion of the
web of relations.
211
The sum total of these three elements, when viewed
interrelationally, is creative of a de-centred, social
being-ness termed by Arendt, the ‘who’. These three
elements and the ‘who’ which they create, are the centre
of this section. I will in due course provide some
explanation for various delimitations and omissions;
however it is not my intention to fully treat every part
of the rich fabric that is THC. I have divided the three
elements into two categories for the purpose of
explanation. The first of these is
The activities of being
The first activity crucial to an empowered sociality is the
fundamental human condition that Arendt refers to as
plurality: “plurality” claims Arendt “is the law of the
earth” (Arendt 1958 op cit p19). Indeed more than any other
element, it is Arendt's embrace of plurality which undercuts
the entire Platonic philosophical tradition (for a good
discussion of this in relation to Heidegger see Benhabib S.
1996 p104-107).
212
Plurality in common with each condition had two conjoined
modes - passive and active. The passive mode establishes
plurality as a condition of human life and the active mode,
relates to plurality as it is contained within the active
inter-relationality of human lived-nessv. Moreover, inherent
within these twofold meanings are the dual qualities of
equality and distinction (Arendt 1958 op cit p175). In the
first sense plurality exists “because men not Man inhabit
the earth” (ibid p7) and because as human beings we are
always both the same and unique (ibid p8). It is ‘passive’
because it is a condition of being a human being, enacted
and operative at the moment of our natality. As a ‘passive’
condition it does of course still exist inter-relationally,
but this inter-relationality is something which the infant
has played no part in shaping; it is not an active force,
rather it simply is. It is a condition of the world and as
such is related to ‘work’ as the construction of objects
that endure within the world and which provides both an
objective location for our subjectivity and an enduring
213
aspect that renders the world as something over and above
any single human existence. In these terms it is something
we ‘know’ without knowing it: it is there by virtue of the
simple presence of others.
In the second sense, plurality needs to be understood
inter-relationally, not as a simple condition of our birth,
but as a reality of our human being-ness. The first meaning
offers plurality as ‘given’, the second speaks of our
“responsiveness (Curtis K. op cit p25)”, our inter-
relational engagement with it. In the second sense what is
at stake, is the status of plurality, not its existence. What
Arendt is claiming here, is that plurality as an active
condition, needs to be accepted, nurtured, validated and
most importantly recognised. However in this regard there is
an option and if the choice is not to recognise it, then
lives will shape differently, the social will become ‘dimmed
down’; however plurality itself will not disappear, rather
it will simply become potential ignored, potential
concealed.
v By human lived-ness I mean the act and existence of living.
214
Arendt occasionally implies this second, ‘active’ sense of
plurality when she speaks about multiple perspectives. Thus
when speaking of the public world she explicitly links
perspectives to plurality:
“the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and
aspects in which the common world presents itself and for
which no common measurement or denominator has been devised.
For though the common world is the common meeting ground of
all, those who are present have different locations in it,
and the location of one can no more coincide with the
location of another than can the location of two objects”
(ibid p57) For the common world to exist therefore,
plurality must be acknowledged actively, a simple statement
but one with vast ramifications.
Later in the same passage, she states that this common
world is destroyed by the “destruction of the many aspects
in which it presents itself to human plurality” (ibid p58).
Interestingly, Arendt does not explicitly provide a
definition of this second meaning of plurality, rather she
215
locates it relationally - as inherent within action (ibid
p7), as necessary for politics (ibid p7-8) as implicated in
forgiveness and promising, faculties dependent on
“plurality, on the presence and acting of others” (ibid
p237), in relation to otherness (ibid p176) as the basic
sine qua non for the space of appearance (ibid p220). On one
occasion, plurality is defined in opposition to
“sovereignty, the ideal of uncompromising self sufficiency
and mastership is contradictory to the very conditions of
plurality” (ibid p234 my italics).
The common thread in these descriptions is that plurality
functions both as a condition and as a conditioning activity
Thus, when plurality is not recognised and validated, when
it becomes disguised, the common world is lost. Existence
becomes exclusively subjective, isolated, mono-tonal and
thin, precisely because there is no common world in which we
can see ourselves or be recognised. At which point we have
become a mass.
‘If the sameness of the object can no longer be discerned,
no common nature of man, least of all the unnatural
216
conformism of mass society, can prevent the destruction of
the common world, which is usually preceded by the
destruction of the many aspects in which it presents itself
to human plurality (ibid p58)”. Such a situation Arendt
says, is typical of tyranny or mass society, and in a
passage that prefigures Foucault - and which is absolutely
commensurate with our contemporary neo-liberal world of
sovereign instrumentality and ‘all lifestyle no life’ - she
notes the common world has come to an end when it is “seen
only under one aspect and is permitted to present itself in
only one perspective” (ibid p58).
So in summary, plurality functions both as a condition and a
conditioning element in human being-ness: as a condition of
life plurality represents the infinite variety of locational
perspectives ‘given’ to, and occupied by every being and
objects within our inherited common world. As a condition,
its status and its validity function to establish the
ontological basis of our human being-ness. The implication
of this is that plurality can be ‘lost’ or it can be
acknowledged. Crucially for plurality to be the basis for
217
the highest form of our human being-ness it must be lived
openly. Thus plurality is not a concept but an integral part
of our being-ness dependent for its ‘visibility’ on human
activity. The recognition of plurality allows - in contrast
to Habermas and his ideal social space (Calhoune Craig. 1997
p232)vi - for the social to be permanently ‘open’: ‘open’
moreover to both the creation of new identities and the play
of perspectives which construct the “who’ as an inter-
relational and social being. Thus everywhere we look, our
identity is a worldly identity, subject to the prerogative
of the world and to the recognition of plurality. As such
our freedom and our identity can never be an abstract ideal
vi In contrast, without a concrete recognition of plurality, Habermas isforced to turn to the state and its inherently fragmenting, andmechanistic model of idealism to guarantee the same thing; a guaranteethat the history of the twentieth century state can only convince uswill never be given or honoured. What Calhoune also stresses in hisaccount (1997 p232) is the manner in which Habermas’ notion of thepublic space is so much more restricted, unitary, bounded, instrumentaland liberal than Arendt’s. Calhoune shows Habermas’ public space relieson transcending difference rather than recognising inter-relationships(Calhoune C. op cit p248). Moreover because identity is for Habermasformed outside public space, public disclosure is denied (ibid p246).The effect of this is to fundamentally constrain the possibilities ofaction, identity and plurality as democratic ingredients, and toconstrain the necessary porous nature of the public space. As was shownin the discussion of Cartesian community such an approach fundamentallyconstrains community because it constructs it as a servant of someabstraction, some outside force.
218
but is always conditional, constrained, but most crucially,
always created. We not only need other people to provide our
‘reality’ by their presence, we also - as we shall see -
need the objects of the world to objectify our subjectivity
(Arendt 1958 op cit p137). As such the simple primacy
afforded by Arendt to plurality, utterly abolishes the
isolated humanist subject.
Action
“Action is the space where I appear to others as others
appear to me, where men exist not merely like other
inanimate things but make their appearance explicit (ibid
p198/199)”. Some quotes small though they are, can
encapsulate an entire work. Many of Arendt’s themes are
contained in this quote, some have been suggested
previously. My description of Arendtian action however,
focuses upon the inter-relationality of action, the duality
of meanings surrounding the term and the paradoxes that
arise as a condition of this inter-relationality. It
allocates primacy and interest to a certain form of action
over that generally valued by liberal critics of Arendt, a
219
valuing which from the perspective of community, is less
useful than the mode of action I intend to stress.
The importance of action is noted in Arendt’s claim that
action is “the exclusive prerogative of man”, “the single
quality which cannot be imagined outside the society of men”
(ibid p22). In fact Arendt asserts the uniqueness of action
as the means by which man becomes distinctly human (ibid
p176). Yet the first paradox is that something so central to
human being-ness is also the most conditioned, most inter-
relational, most constrained of Arendt’s nominated
activities (ibid p178). Arendt insists that for political
action (her ‘highest’ form of action) to exist, it must
contain as its fundamental conditions - in no particular
order-: the shiny brightness of glory (ibid p180), a
revelatory quality (ibid), non-violence (ibid p179), speech
(ibid), disclosure of the ‘who’ (ibid p180), plurality (ibid
p175), “the web of acts and words of other men”(ibid p188),
initiative (ibid p177), no specific motive (ibid p179/206),
and finally, that it take place in a visible, public space
(ibid p180). In all a rare flower and not without the odd
220
problem as shall be shown, yet for all of that, action is
crucial, “for trusting in action and speech as a mode of
being, establishes the reality of one’s self, one’s own
identity and the reality of the world (ibid p208). As such
people must act; they have no choice in the matter (ibid
p8). It is impossible to resist acting for human being-ness
demands that people actualize their being and this can only
be done in action (ibid p208). Something that, given the
conditional nature of action outlined above, would one
assumes, be rather difficult.
So this is the second paradox. For how is action in the form
outlined, both the most fragile (ibid p196) of all human
activities, and the most crucial? Indeed - given its
constrained condition, we might wonder how can it exist at
all? Fortunately there are three meanings of action within
THC, yet the third paradox is that Arendt devotes the bulk
of the book to only one - the most fragile and most futile
(ibid p195) and from the perspective of community the most
problematic. What it is important is to understand at this
221
juncture, is that unlike the other conditions, the condition
of action has not two, but three meanings.
Firstly, in company with all other activities and conditions
(ibid p7-9) it is a simple passive condition established at
birth, forever linked to the capacity of beginning that
natality embodies (ibid p177). Secondly, as an actualising
activity, it is creative as we shall see, of man’s unique
identity, human relationships and the bridging of the
objective and subjective worlds (ibid p196). This is the
wider meaning of action; the action which is present to some
degree in all activity (ibid p9), where “the smallest act in
the most limited circumstances bears the same boundlessness
because one deed and sometimes one word, suffices to change
every constellation (ibid p190)”. However there is another
meaning, a much more limited meaning, though conversely for
Arendt, a much more potent one. In this third meaning,
action creates a specific public space, and enunciates a
true politics (ibid p179) and furthermore, this political
action is instituted historically in the polis, the French
and American revolutions, as well as certain Twentieth
222
century instances of direct democracy. It is this final form
of action that Arendt enunciates as the highest form of
action (ibid p205) and which, in its fullest manifestation,
is surrounded by the plethora of conditions outlined
earlier. And that is the problem. For given that, in its
fullest glory, it is the product of rare moments of history,
one wonders how useful it can be for an attempt to construct
an approach to everyday human being-ness? Indeed, given the
rare appearance of genuine political action, at least as
Arendt tells it, it is fair to ask why fabrication and work
are so demeaned, after all opportunities for genuine action-
historically speaking - appear rather light on the ground.
Yet this cannot be true either, for the possibility to
create political action is always there as potential (ibid
p199).
To arrive at an answer to these questions, and to demarcate
clearly the manner in which the second meaning of action can
serve both a model of Arendtian action, and function within
an empowered and everyday sociality, this section intends to
examine action exclusively in its ‘active’ modes; an
223
examination which hopefully will allow an answer to this
issue to emerge. In due course it shall also be seen that
part of the answer is contained in the notion of the web of
relations.
Thus action as an activity “is never possible in isolation,
to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act”
(ibid p188). Action for Arendt is worldly, it precedes being
and thought. Thus action restores the social relationship
because it generates relationships across boundaries (ibid
p189), it is the common world. Thought does not initiate
action, action is not a product of will or motive, nor does
it come from any form of individualised psychological model
(Arendt H.1961 p155); action, unlike motives and aims which
are always typical (Arendt op cit 1958 p206), is unique.
This is precisely what accounts for its miraculous and
revelatory quality. For Arendt freedom is not found in the
choice to act, or in the idea that precedes action, but only
in the action itself (Arendt H. 1961 op cit p153). Action
exists therefore as an end in itself, not for instrumental
purpose or for a higher truth or the good of man (Villa
224
Dana. 1996 op cit p52) and as such action is the opposite of
the sameness and isolation that characterises labour and the
dimmed down world of instrumental reason (ibid p210).
Finally, action is intrinsically linked to speech; indeed
for Arendt they are almost conflated terms (Arendt 1958 op
cit p176). What is clear however is that by speech she does
not mean discourse, nor does she mean a situation where
discursive modes are privileged over action, rather speech
for Arendt is ‘speaking’. In this sense it is clear that
speech must accompany action, because action needs to be
communication to be social (ibid p178), and most importantly
because, given that action is revelatory of identity within
the social, this identity can only be agreed through
speaking (ibid). Given that Arendt thinks that a person in
isolation is not a person (ibid 176/180) it is also clear
that a person talking to themselves is also not a person:
speech for Arendt is action: it personifies action.
Certainly when she describes the relationship between them
(ibid), she does so in terms which stress their inter-
relationality as conjoined terms, and also in conjunction
225
with other conditions as evoked and conjoined within the
matrix that action creates (ibid p178).
Therefore action is the most inter-relational of all the
conditions and activities, and unlike labour which submerges
our identity (ibid), action reveals our particular qualities
as human beings (ibid p176). Yet, and this is the fourth
paradox, action is also the most fragile of human activities
(ibid p198). For action is the only means of revealing our
being and yet, not only is this revealed identity uncertain
(ibid p182), it always carries with it a dual status that
constructs us both as doer and sufferer (ibid p189). That is
one reason why action requires plurality and trust, just as
much as it is creative of sharing and trust (for an example
of this see (ibid p189) where in words obviously aimed at
Nietzsche she speaks of the brilliant man who fails to
enlist help).
So some form of equal inter-personal relationships is vital
for the enunciation of action, and every form of action
establishes some form of relationship. While action has two
226
parts and needs an initiator (ibid p189), it never remains
under their control, it is unfinalizable and unknowable,
inherently open ended, requiring the presence of others as a
condition of its existence (ibid). This is why Arendt
equates action with freedom, for human beings are free as
long as they act and not before or after (Hansen P. 1993
p54).
Yet it is a constrained freedom, a conditioned freedom, and
it is conditioned precisely because both freedom and action
are worldly matters, not inner, subjective or lonely
pursuits, they must take place in a constrained social
arena.
Another paradox, for not only does action require the
presence of others, it also creates a space for others
(Arendt 1958 op cit p198). And it does so as a condition of
its actualisation, a space moreover, where equal
relationships can come into being. Yet the great paradox is
that action is also conditioned “ridden with many
frustrations” (ibid p182) the first and most important of
227
which is the congenital unpredictability of action (ibid
p244).
This is why, for Arendt, the highest form of action is
politics, for the political is the conscious recognition of
the nature of action, as a condition of being. Freedom is
not something conferred upon human beings; it is something
that needs to be created within the conditioned nature of
their existence in the world.
Clearly then, Arendt’s notion of action is an overturning of
the epistemological division of thought and action. It is a
re-assertion of the human as an inter-relational social being.
This is why I have stressed the paradoxes within Arendtian
action because inter-relationality creates paradox in a
manner that essentialist ‘truth’ and the idealist
formulations of metaphysics and mechanistic theory never
can. However I have concentrated here upon a general
description of action as an activity. If Arendt is to
assist the project of establishing a de-centred model of
community and sociality, action itself must be located in
228
some realm other than the narrowly political realm
highlighted by Arendt.
THE LOCATION OF BEING
Web of relationsvii
Having delineated the general defining conditions of action
I now want to discuss the two areas for its enactment.
In the previous section I said action embodied a space, a
space creative of relationships. The most recognisable
Arendtian space is the political; metaphorically represented
by the polis. However, just as Arendt’s has two ‘active’
meanings for action - a wider one and a narrow political one
vii In the process of examining Arendt’s use of the term ‘web’, there is a slightly tangential issue to address regarding other social science usage of the metaphor of a web. Principal among these is the work of Richard Rorty, who describes the subject as a “tissue of contingent relations, a web that stretches backward and forward through past and future times” (Rorty 1989 p41). Rosenthal questions the lack of creativeagency within Rorty’s web (Rosenthal. op cit), while Featherstone (1995 p45) argues that, while Rorty endorses a de-centred approach, he fails to explain questions of linkage or what key terms mean. Indeed, one could argue that Rorty’s aversion to detailed explanation of the web is what allows him to both escape liberalism and the rational subject, while retaining the capacity to make such normative statements as “the selves created by modern liberal society are better that the selves earlier societies created” (Rorty R. op cit p63). In any case, while, aswe have seen, he is not alone in this privileging of abstraction and theaxis of subject and state, Rorty’s particular lack of detail makes his work little more than a normative discursive tissue. Certainly without more details, what he provides is of little use in developing an approach to an empowered sociality.
229
- she also presents two equivalent spaces for each of these
active meanings. It is the wider of these, the web of
relations, which is the focus here, because it alone
establishes the means by which an empowered version of the
social can be articulated on an everyday basis.
Arendt defines the ‘web of relations’ as “the in-between
(ibid p182)” by which she means the space that “exists where
ever men live together (ibid p184)”. This space is
“concerned with the matter of the world of things in which
men move, which physically lies between them and out of
which arise their specific worldly interests” (ibid p182).
In short, this world is the common world (p52), and unlike
the narrow political space of the polis, the web of
relations as the common world, contains everyone and every
interest (p 50). It is the world of absolute plurality -
acknowledged and unacknowledged - the world where the
subjective and the objective intersect. Arendt’s description
is sufficient here:
230
“These interests constitute,...., something..... which lies
between people and therefore can relate and bind them
together. Most action and speech is concerned with this in-
between, which varies with each group of people, so that the
words and deeds are about some worldly objective reality in
addition to being a disclosure of the acting and speaking
agent. Since this disclosure of the subject is an integral
part of all, even the most ‘objective’ intercourse, the
physical worldly in-between along with its interests is
overlaid and..... overgrown with an altogether different in-
between which consists of deed and words and owes its origin
exclusively to men’s acting and speaking directly to one
another. This second, subjective in-between is not tangible,
since there are no tangible objects into which it could
solidify; the process of acting and speaking can leave
behind no such results and end products. But for all its
intangibility, this in-between is no less real than the
world of things we visibly have in common. We call this
reality the “web” of human relationships, indicating by the
metaphor its somewhat intangible quality” (ibid p182/183)
231
There are several key issues I want to stress about this
“intangible web”. Firstly, because this is the space where
persons disclose themselves as subjects even when they are
speaking of other worldly matters (ibid), their disclosure
is both as complete as any that take place within the
political space (p50-52). Additionally, and precisely
because this disclosure unites the subjective and the
objective within the world, it is possibly more complete
(though less dramatic) that similar disclosures within the
polis.
Secondly, the disclosive action that takes place in the
context of this web retains all the qualities of action.
What it lacks, a lack that Arendt only implies is the
‘tangibility of glory’- without the framework of the polis,
the process of acting and speaking in the common world can
leave behind no results.
Thirdly, this disclosure of the ‘who’ falls into an already
existing web of relations (ibid), that is it is conditioned
action, and a conditioned being that is created.
232
It should be noted that the “web of relations” stands as a
reductio ad absurdum to those critics of Arendt who chaff at
what they perceive as the stark and strict demarcation of
the household and the polis, even if it is a problem they
largely create for themselves. (Benhabib S 1996 op cit;
Kaleb G. 2000; D’Entreves Maurizio Passerin op cit p8;
Moruzzi Norma Clare op cit p6; Villa 1999 rebuts them 1999
p12-18, also Lefort C. 1988 specifically rebuts Benhabib op
cit p49). However given that the polis and the household are
obviously contained within the “web of relations’ and that
the capacity to construct a space of politics is clearly
available to everyone, it is not too much to presume that
the polis and the household are exemplary for Arendt, rather
than essentialised (Hansen P. op cit shares this opinion).
Indeed the use of the term “household” in relation to the
rise of economics (Arendt H. 1958 op cit p28-9) reinforces
the view that what is being referred to here is an attitude,
rather than an essentialised material or social demarcation.
Finally, there is another manifestation of Arendt's stress
upon the worldly nature of human being-ness, for the web of
233
relations is more than simply human centred. Arendt
specifically includes objects as equally constitutive
elements within among the web of relations. And she does
this because as she states in the first chapter
“whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship
with human life immediately assumes the character of a
condition of human existence (ibid p9)” and furthermore
“The things of the world have the function of stabilising
human life and their objectivity lies” (ibid p137 see also
p95). In contradiction to mechanistic philosophy, Arendt
thus has a world centred approach not a human centred
approach, and her inter-relationality is never confined
exclusively to human inter-relationality. For just as action
discloses the world to us, so action is preserved outside
the cyclical arc of birth and death by the world that work
creates - “for what humans, through action and work create,
outlives them, and has no concern for them” (Arendt H. 1961
op cit p156). And this applies to our objects just as it
does to our stories, for “the existence of a public realm
234
and the world’s subsequent transformation into a community
of things that gather men together and relates them to each
other depends entirely on permanence” (Arendt H. 1958 op cit
p55). And this is how it should be for the world is over and
above, all and every individual (Arendt H 1961 op cit p156).
Objects therefore locate us and ground our human being-ness
within the web of relations, just as action does. They
objectify our subjectivity (Arendt H, 1958 op cit p37) and
stabilise our fragile existence; a dual process that bridges
the gap between the subjective and the objective and means
that no material analysis ever fully accounts for our being
(ibid p183).
The web of relations therefore is the totality of everything
that we are born into, as well as being the ‘force’
conditioning the terms within which our being can be
enunciated. So in short the “web of relations” is sociality,
the most inclusive sociality possible; the very sociality
needless to say, which this argument seeks to theoretically
elaborate.
235
SPACE OF APPEARANCE
Having established the web of relations as Arendt's
inclusive, generic term for human sociality, it is now
possible to examine the second of her generic spaces - the
space of appearance- which in contrast to the web of
relations, represents a much more delineated more contained
notion. It is also clear that the space of appearance is not
something outside or separate from the web of relations,
such a mistaken theoretical abstraction would undercut
Arendt's intentions. Rather it is better to see it as a
specific re-configuration of the web of relations in the
particular instance.
For Arendt, the space of appearance is the space of human
being-ness and sociality. Unlike the web it is not something
we simply assume by birth. It is the combined product of a
momentary sociality as determining elements within the
social; in its most realised form it is the recognition of
action and plurality is a specific objectifying act of
‘being-creation’. It is created by plurality and action.
236
Thus, it is the space where particular combinations of
momentary interaction take place.
Thus the space of appearance, not the polis, is the true
generic term for the Arendtian political space, a
distinction most critics seem reluctant to acknowledge
(though Arendt herself sometimes creates this confusion
(ibid p199)). Moreover, it should also be noted, against
those intensely literal American critics, that Arendt does
not exclude women or indeed anyone else from the space of
appearance. ‘Wherever people gather together” says Arendt,
“it (the polis) is potentially there, but only potentially,
not necessarily and not forever (ibid p199)”: a statement
which indeed shows that for Arendt, the polis is nothing but
the political manifestation of the space of appearance. This
is why the space of appearance is enacted as a “specifically
human achievement (ibid p207)”. This is also clear from
Arendt’s insistence that such a space is an informal,
directly democratic space – “it predates all formal
constitutions… and even government (ibid p199)”. Indeed
Arendt is very careful to specifically state that this “true
237
space lies between people living together for this purpose,
no matter where they happen to be (ibid p198)”.
Thus the true condition for the existence and preservation
of the space of appearance is plurality as a conditional
form of action. For what upholds and preserves this space,
is the specific quality of the care brought to it and the
specific degree of human being-ness acknowledged within it.
FINALLY THE ‘WHO’
“If men wish to be free it is precisely sovereignty they
must renounce’ (Arendt H. op cit 1961 p165). Arendt could
also have said, that if people wish to be fully alive they
must renounce the illusion of sovereignty, (one could say
the virtuality of sovereignty) as that is the clear message
of her work.
As such, and given that Arendt’s clear aim is to overturn
the sovereign individual from his liberal, enlightenment
perch as the lord, master and centre of all the worlds
(Arendt 1958 op cit p254), a deal of THC is devoted to the
historical development of this fallacy of omnipotence
238
designed in Arendt's view with the idea of escaping the
fragility of action, and the conditional nature of life in
the world (ibid p185/221-224/275/279. Also p75 for the
Christian contribution of the essentialised ‘good’ person
and p254 for Descartes). Moreover the creation of the
Cartesian individual erects two mutually antagonistic and
separate states - the inner truth of the individual and the
objective world accessible only to materialistic
interpretation (ibid p293). For Arendt the results of this
split have been devastating; the individual has abandoned
all sense of a common world (ibid p52/53) and sacrificed the
uniqueness and freedom for the disempowering uniformity of
psychological qualities (ibid p293 also quoted in Villa Dana
1996 op cit p52) where man encounters only himself (Arendt
1958 op cit p46/261). Nor can this loss be redeemed by
private happiness (ibid p50/112), for a life without action
or speech is “literally dead to the world” (ibid p176).
Instead of disclosive action we are now presented with a
mass of data and statistics inherently reductive of human
being-ness (ibid p322), precisely because it erects human
239
being-ness as the articulation of an average plan (ibid 40-
42). In this regard Arendt's criticism is every bit as
vitriolic as Foucault’s. Moreover, there is nothing
particularly strange or radical about Arendt's criticism in
this regard (though Pitkin 1998 op cit seems to think so).
Given her stinging criticism of the unitary rational
subject,
So Arendt’s approach allows her to simply by-pass the
sterile debates between agency and structure. Thus, she does
not say that the “outside’ is simply infolded into the
subject as do some Foucauldians (Rose, N. 1999 p142). Nor
does she say that individuality is the outcome of abilities
(Giddens. op cit) or any other form of inherent capacity,
including rationality. Rather, she shifts the entire debate
from a question of “what we are” - a statement seeking a
definitive answer - to “who we are”, a relational conception
(Arendt. 1958 p10) which renders identity open, conditional
and ephemeral.
240
For Arendt our knowledge concerning what a person is, is
limited to their physical characteristics - the sound of
their voice, their physical bearing, etc. (ibid p179). As
such “what a person is”, is a question that can never be
answered (ibid p10/11).
So our identity, formed in action and speech, has a life
of its own, and its effects go far beyond anything we can
either contain or conceive. Identity is conditioned by the
nature of action and by the need to appear (ibid p176),
something which requires action and speech, which are the
form for such an appearing (ibid p208). Thus this
‘appearing’ is something “from which no human being can
refrain and still be human (ibid)”. Yet action and speech
are inherently boundless and unpredictable; action has no
author and no definitive finalisation (ibid p184): it can
never be fully known, either by the one who acts or the many
who observe. For the being-ness which acts can neither
control the action, or contain, marshal or conceal what the
action discloses (ibid p192), similarly those who observe
are also blind as to motive or consequence (ibid p179).
241
Therefore, given that every action requires plurality and
always falls into a web of relations, no single, definitive
perspective is possible concerning what it is precisely that
action or speech means or the “who” which says it. The ‘who’
is then, as it were, seen from a multitude of perspectives,
and the ‘who’, the “who are you (ibid p178)” is created
inter-relationally as a temporary conjunction of all the
perspectives, including that of the person involved.
Clearly therefore, this creation of the “who’ is something
that goes on eternally, where ever men meet each other (ibid
p182), and our being-ness can at best, be only a created
narrative, sourced from the partial and unfinalizable view
that our actions present to ourselves and to those around
us.
The ‘person’ is as Arendt says, clearly just a
provisional “collection of signs” (ibid p182) never be
closed or finalised (Kristeva J op cit p59).
It is on this basis that I have labelled Arendt's
project, inter-relational and coherent. For her privileging
242
of the social and the inter-relationality which sustains the
social, is a fully enunciated working out of the
implications of this privileging. For Arendt, ‘a community,
a shared world, a common sense of appearance is the
fundamental condition for the achievement of self hood’
(Villa Dana 1999 op cit p7) and action, identity and
plurality assume their particular Arendtian meaning from the
elevation of fragility of being and sociality over and
above, the stability of thought and abstraction.
So the establishment of the ‘who’ represents the culmination
of Arendt’s entire re-figuring of the social. as such her
re-configuring also destroys the naturalisation of the
mechanistic model through which modernity has articulated
its regime of knowledge for three hundred years Truly it can
be said that Arendt appropriates Heidegger essential
ontological approach, eliminates its subjectivism, and uses
it to overturn western thought (Villa Dana. 1996 op cit
p114). Yet this ‘culmination’ occupies less than five pages
while the bulk of the book is devoted largely to the things
that obstruct the development of the ‘who” and obscure the
243
true inter-relationality which underpins Arendt's version of
the social. More importantly Arendt appears to enunciate
this ‘who’ as the product of an extremely constrained space.
Thus for the purpose of developing a new approach to
community, her account of a de-centred being-ness needs to
be extended.
244
Top Related