Hannah Arendt and the Concept of Political Thinking

160 Pages·2015·0.54 MB·English

by  Mohammad S. Alwahaib

Florida State University Libraries
Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2006
Hannah Arendt and the Concept of Political
Thinking
Mohammad S. Alwahaib
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The Florida State University
College of Arts and Sciences

Hannah Arendt and the Concept of Political Thinking

By

Mohammad Alwahaib

A Dissertation Submitted to the
Department of Philosophy
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded:
Fall Semester, 2006

Copyright © 2006
Mohammad Alwahaib
All Rights Reserved
The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Mohammad Alwahaib
defended on August 4, 2006.
_________________________
Peter Dalton
Professor Directing Dissertation

__________________________
John Kelsay
Outside Committee Member

__________________________
Russell Dancy
Committee Member

Approved:
______________________________
J. Piers Rawling, Chair, Department of Philosophy

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee
members.

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This dissertation is dedicated to my Father, Shehab Alwahaib. With each passing day I
realize more how much he lives within me, and how great a shadow he casts over my life.
He may not have believed that I understood all that he did for me, but I do now. I want to
thank him for always being there for me when I needed him. Because of him, I have
become a better person than I may have without him.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Peter Dalton for valuable comments and suggestions throughout
the various stages of this research; I am most grateful to him for giving me the benefit of
his attention and expert help. Special thanks to Shiyloh Duncan, a friend and colleague at
FSU. I will always be grateful to her unlimited support, insights, and generosity in
reading, commenting and ‘Englishing’ early drafts of this dissertation.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………..vi
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………..1
1. FROM PHILOSOPHY TO POLITICS……………………………………………..9
The Distinction between the Pariah and the Parvenu…………………………11
Zionism………………………………………………………………………..19
The Palestinian Question……………………………………………………...37
2. A CLOSER LOOK AT ‘POLITICAL THINKING’……………………………….44
Philosophy and Politics………………………………………………………..45
The Human Condition…………………………………………………………62
Eichmann’s Thoughtlessness…………………………………………………..91
3. ON THINKING……………………………………………………………………115
CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………….129
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………136
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………….150
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………154

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ABSTRACT

Many claim that Hannah Arendt’s political thought was developed through
various stages, and that this development took place through various confrontations with
topics such as ideology, totalitarianism and her concerns with the so-called “Jewish
question”. Arendt’s political thought is usually characterized by an early emphasis on the
priority of the political over that of the mind. In other words, her work is usually read as
emphasizing the priority of the mode of living-with-others; action, over the solitary
activity of thinking. This ‘early’ emphasis on the priority of politics goes hand in hand
with her rejection of all transcendent standards or truths in the sphere of politics. Arendt’s
later writings, which were devoted mainly to the life of the mind, are usually read as a
reversal of thought: a priority of thinking over action. Arendt’s alleged reversal of
thought took place through her witnessing the trial of the war criminal Adolph Eichmann
whose crime, Arendt suggested, sprang from the fact of thoughtlessness. Arendt’s new
emphasis on the priority of thinking is supposedly something for which her early works
made no provision. Almost contradicting everything she believed in before, Arendt’s new
‘political thinking’ allows the introduction of truth and transcendental standards into the
political realm.
I believe that the above interpretation does not do justice to Arendt’s political
thought. To introduce the distinction between ‘early’ and ‘late’ into her works obscures
above all the continuity of her thought. I believe that there is a unifying thread that runs
through Arendt’s main works whether ‘early’ or ‘late.’ I call this unifying thread
‘political thinking.’ Careful analysis of Arendt’s ‘early’ thoughts on politics shows a
considerable emphasis on the importance of thinking in relation to politics or action. It is
this specific kind of thinking, political thinking, that does justice to both, the demands of
the mind on one hand, and the demands of experience on the other. I explore the
development of ‘political thinking’ in Arendt’s major writings beginning from her
doctoral dissertation on Rahel Varnhagen to her final thoughts on The Life of the Mind.

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INTRODUCTION

Hannah Arendt once said in describing political western tradition, “Our tradition
of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I
believe it came to no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.”1What is common
among these philosophers, she believes, is their approach to the political sphere. To all of
them, with varying degrees of course and in different contexts, politics is the domain of
vulnerability, unpredictability and contingency. In other words, ‘truth’ can never be
found in ordinary political practices. Thus, Plato turned against the Polis and became
confident that if there would be a remedy for politics then philosophers must become
politicians or politicians become philosophers. He believed that the reform of politics
must come from a vision of truth. One can find the same approach in Aristotle although
with less confidence in ‘truth’. The moderns committed the same mistake as Plato
because they also imagined some laws, to be sure, absolute laws according to which
history progresses. Such laws are believed to be valid, beyond any doubt and
discoverable by reason alone. From hence they held that the movement of history is
necessary and predictable. The result of the modern’s doctrines with regard to the relation
between thought and action is similar to the despotic one of Plato. It is true that the
moderns emphasized the role of experience and so they seem to overcome the dualism
between transcendent truth and historical contingency. However, Arendt believes,
modern political theories as well as the ancient are one and the same; they both resulted
in undermining what is truly human in the sphere of politics, freedom. They both tend to
overlook the real value of politics by judging it from the vantage point of Reason.
Arendt’s analysis of freedom in relation to what threatens it goes hand in hand
with her analysis of some key notions such as plurality and action: the sphere of plurality
is the sphere that allows everyone’s freedom to be established or revealed through action.
She believed that every human being has an identity or a life story that is so unique that it
can never be duplicated. The ontological foundation of such unique identity, she argues,
is the fact of natality or of giving birth to a new person. This genuine existence of
someone can be revealed through the practice of freedom, that is, in acting and speaking
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among other unique and free individuals. Arendt celebrates the sphere of politics, called
the vita activa, since it is the sphere where individuals reveal their unique selves through
‘action.’ Such celebration of action has some implications with regard to ‘truth’ and
history. Truth, traditionally understood by political philosophers, does not deserve its
historical exaltation since it is usually held by ‘professional thinkers’ and not the rest of
the citizens. If something is to be praised then it must be the opinions of ordinary people,
i.e., their unique and different ways of seeing and assessing their affairs. Thus, the
commitment to Truth in the realm of absolute standards of the philosophers must be
replaced with a commitment to our different opinions in the realm of human affairs. The
implication of the exaltation of action with regard to history is that history is inherently
unpredictable—something which is contrary to the modern belief that history somehow
progresses according to some laws. These implications will be seen in more detail as the
development of Arendt’s thought is analyzed.
Most commentators believe the works of Arendt can be viewed as an attempt to
describe and analyze some of the basic problems of politics. One of these problems is the
disastrous effects of theory, or intellectual thinking, on the realm of politics, the realm
where genuine freedom must be found. Although her attempt to rescue freedom from the
implications of theory is obviously ‘theoretical’, it is important to see that her approach is
not corrupted by any theoretical prejudice to a significant extent--something that forced
her analysis into introducing some new terms or new meanings for traditional terms.
Perhaps she wanted to distance herself from the tradition by introducing such terms. In
the works of Arendt that will be discussed later, we will see clearly how she refused to
measure the worth of the political realm by the standards of contemplation or the vita
contemplativa.
Arendt’s theoretical encounter with all forms of intellectualistic bias, including
ideology and totalitarianism, with regard to politics is the subject matter of this
dissertation. Upon a closer look at her works one can see clearly that her thoughts on this
subject had undergone some developments in many directions over the years. Beginning
with the works on the so-called Jewish question to her final unfinished work on thinking,
The Life of the Mind, I will give an account of this development through a survey of these
major works. I also intend to answer the general question of whether Arendt succeeded in
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this project, namely, the possibility of thinking about politics without any commitment to
a transcendent view of world-order.
In fact, commentators largely disagree about answering the above question. Some
tend to believe that her alliance with action was abandoned later in her life while other
commentators believe that she maintained the same attitude throughout her life. I would
like to ‘speculate’ about the reasons for these disagreements. I believe that there are three
main reasons for such great disagreements and controversies. The first is due to the fact
that most commentators were so selective in reading the works of Arendt. Most
commentators tend to examine only one or two of her works as an expression of her final
thoughts and consequently draw conclusions which might not be supported by her other
works.
The second reason for the existing scholarly disagreements about Arendt is that
her works became a good battleground for different political views in Israel and the
United States in particular. It is not an uncommon belief that the works of Arendt are
‘politically’ abused. We know that Arendt was involved in Jewish politics earlier in her
life and, not surprisingly, she had friends and foes. She contributed a lot of writing on the
present so-called mid-east problem--the problem that produced nothing but massacres
and violence for more than fifty five years; somehow Arendt predicted these horrific
consequences! She believed that a just solution to the Jewish question must not be a
‘Jewish state’ but a ‘Jewish homeland’, a kind of bi-national state where the native Arabs
can live in peace with Jews. Unfortunately, the mid-east problem is unsolved and still
fanatically discussed. The present political debates over the mid-east problem among
politicians tend to find its echo in the works of today’s scholars. Most of the present
literature on Arendt suffers from its intentional or may be unintentional ‘politicization’ of
Arendt which results directly in weakening or distorting her general argument.
The last reason for such disagreements is due to the nature of Arendt’s works and
her different concerns throughout these works. Arendt, for those who are familiar with
her biography, has traveled intellectually between so many ‘islands’ of thought. She
began her life with pure philosophical concerns. This is not surprising when we look at
her academic background. She inherited the tradition of German philosophy through her
education in German universities. She was a distinguished pupil and lover of Martin
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