HANNAH ARENDT AND THE POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS A Dissertation ...

216 Pages·2011·0.69 MB·English

A PLACE IN THE WORLD: HANNAH ARENDT AND THE POLITICAL
CONDITIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

by
Gregory Laurence Dinsmore
January 2011
© 2011 Gregory Laurence Dinsmore
A PLACE IN THE WORLD: HANNAH ARENDT AND THE POLITICAL
CONDITIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Gregory Laurence Dinsmore, Ph. D.
Cornell University 2011

Hannah Arendt famously argued in the Origins of Totalitarianism that human
rights were unable to protect the stateless people produced by the conflicts of
the first half of the 20th century because they were unable to secure the 'right
to have rights.' Commentators on her thought have puzzled over this phrase
for over 50 years. The question is how to reconcile the clearly universalist
spirit behind Arendt's reflections on rights and the clearly local character of her
overall approach to politics. In this dissertation, I argue that Arendt's approach
presents a profound critique of liberal human rights theory which is itself
central to contemporary human rights theory. Specifically, I take up Arendt's
claim that in order to be a bearer of rights, a person must have 'a place in the
world'. I argue that Arendt's concept of ‘world’, an idea that she appropriated
from Heidegger and outlined in The Human Condition, was already at work in
The Origins of Totalitarianism. I further argue that it is only in light of her
concept of 'world' that we can understand the ‘right to have rights’. This
dissertation is therefore both an interpretation the political thought of Hannah
Arendt and an application of that thought to contemporary human rights theory
and practice. It consists in an evaluation and critique of the role of human
rights in international politics, engaging with normative human rights theory, as
well as specific problems of statelessness, international responsibility and
international intervention.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Greg Dinsmore received his B.A. in Political Science from Université Laval in
Quebec City, Canada in 1995. He received his M.A. from Cornell University in
2002.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank everyone who has helped me to complete this project.
First, I would like to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of my advisor,
Anna Marie Smith. Without her guidance, support and encouragement, I
would not have been able to complete this dissertation. I will always be
grateful for everything she has done.
I would also like to thank Jason Frank for his invaluable insight and
suggestions, particularly in helping me navigate through the details and
idiosyncrasies of Arendt’s thought. Henry Shue also deserves special mention
for all his guidance in the initial stages of the dissertation. Peter Katzenstein,
Mary Katzenstein, Nancy Hirschmann, Isaac Kramnick, Matthew Evangelista,
Susan Buck-Morss have also contributed in important ways to this dissertation
over the years. I would also like to acknowledge the unwitting contributions of
my friend Ryan Hurl who, through many long conversations and arguments,
has been extremely helpful in thinking about the issues at work in this project.
I’d like to acknowledge the financial support of the Mellon Foundation and
the Peace Studies Program at Cornell University during the course of my
studies.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support during this process.
Most importantly, my partner, Ruba, has not only encouraged me over the
years, but her persistence and drive in her own endeavours have been an
inspiration to me in my academic career.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Biographical Sketch .......................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... iv
Table of Contents ............................................................................................. v
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1: Hannah Arendt and the Paradox of Human Rights ...................... 15
1.1 The Nation-State and the Perplexities of Human Rights ............. 19
1.2 The Paradoxes and Perplexities of Human Rights ..................... 23
1.3 How to Understand the Right to Have Rights ............................. 28
1.4 Rightlessness and the Right to Have Rights ............................... 31
1.5 The Futility of Seeking a Ground for Human Rights.................... 34
1.6 Sovereignty and Rightlessness .................................................. 36
1.7 Rights, Politics and Plurality ....................................................... 42
1.8 The World as Crucial to the Right to Have Rights....................... 44
1.9 Conclusion .................................................................................. 47
Chapter 2: Natural Rights vs. Human Rights ................................................. 51
2.1 Human Rights – Political, Not Metaphysical ............................... 55
2.2 Human Rights as a Common Concern ....................................... 60
2.3 Sovereignty as Right to do Wrong .............................................. 68
2.4 Conclusion .................................................................................. 71
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Chapter 3: Is There a Basic Right to Political Membership?.......................... 74
3.1 The Logic of Basic Rights ........................................................... 78
3.2 Liberal Conceptions of a Right to Membership ........................... 82
3.3 The Problems with a Right to Membership ................................. 86
3.4 The Boundary Problem ............................................................... 89
3.5 Political Membership Without Human Rights .............................. 92
3.6 Conclusion .................................................................................. 95
Chapter 4: Arendt's Concept of 'World' ........................................................ 100
4.1 The World ................................................................................. 107
4.2 Heidegger, Plurality and the World of Work .............................. 113
4.3 The World in the Origins of Totalitarianism ............................... 119
4.4 The World as Threshold Between zoe and bios ....................... 125
4.5 Conclusion ................................................................................ 132
Chapter 5: Collective Responsibility ............................................................ 140
5.1 Responsibility in Arendt's Thought ............................................ 145
5.2 Personal and Collective Responsibility ..................................... 148
5.3 Personal Responsibility ............................................................ 149
5.4 Collective Responsibility ........................................................... 153
5.5 Common Responsibility ............................................................ 157
5.6 Collective vs. Common Responsibility ...................................... 159
5.7 Promising, Consent and Obedience ......................................... 162
5.8 Liberal Approaches to Political Obligation ................................ 164
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5.9 Obligation, Consent and Obedience ......................................... 166
5.10 Obedience, Consent and the Will ............................................. 169
5.11 The Importance of the World to Promising ............................... 173
5.12 Conclusion ................................................................................ 178
Conclusion: Rights and Responsibility ........................................................ 180
Bibliography .................................................................................................. 205
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Introduction

Human rights stand at the centre of any contemporary consideration of
international morality. Many would regard their enjoyment by everyone on the
planet to be humanity’s primary responsibility and, therefore, the fact that a
large proportion of human beings cannot enjoy them, its biggest failure.
However, what is most disturbing is that for the last century or so, as human
rights discourse has gained strength and become incorporated into the
relations between states through treaties and conventions, human suffering
inflicted by humans seems to be on the rise. It is as though the more we
affirm the innate dignity of human beings in global discourse, the more it is
denied or denigrated in practice. One of the purposes of this dissertation is to
explore this puzzle in an attempt to under<stand whether there is something in
human rights discourse that contributes to the violation of its own principles or
whether it is simply a matter of human cruelty and indifference outstripping our
own ability to defend against it.

That human suffering might be linked to human rights was raised by
Hannah Arendt after the Second World War as part of an attempt to
understand how European society could have collapsed so completely to have
allowed the atrocities of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes to have taken place.
Her critique of human rights reprised Edmund Burke's at the time of the
French Revolution. Burke argued that there was something paradoxical in
1
affirming the dignity of the human in general. For Burke, it was not the fact of
one’s humanness that conferred dignity but rather one’s place in society.
Similarly, Arendt was disturbed by conceptions of universal human rights that
broke down as soon as human beings were no longer protected by their
nation-state of birth.

Arendt’s reflections on human rights are both promising and problematic.
Unlike Burke who had no trouble dismissing the idea of the Rights of Man as
dangerous, revolutionary nonsense, Arendt subscribed to the ideal of a
common humanity that animates human rights discourse while remaining
skeptical about human rights themselves. What struck her most forcefully was
the insufficiency of human rights to the task of protecting and empowering
human beings. It is for this reason that it is worthwhile to revisit her thoughts
on the perplexities that surround human rights and the relationship between
these reflections and her political theory more generally. Given the empirical
inadequacy of human rights discourse to the task of protection human beings,
it is worthwhile to reconsider, with Arendt, whether there is something about
human rights discourse itself that gets in its own way. Arendt famously said
that the point of her book, The Human Condition, was nothing more than to
“think what we are doing.”1 The point of this dissertation then is to think about
what we are doing when we talk about human rights.

1 H. Arendt, The Human Condition (referred to below as HC), (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1958), p. 5.
2