Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
Arendt's apparent exclusion of violence from politics — her definitionally-enforced distinction — actually linked politics and war together in a historically and conceptually rich relationship. She ...
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Arendt's apparent exclusion of violence from politics — her definitionally-enforced distinction — actually linked politics and war together in a historically and conceptually rich relationship. She criticized the dominant Western traditions of social and political thought for borrowing their models of politics from the realm of organised violence, of command and obedience. But it is her political thought that is deeply influenced by the enduring significance of war. It may be necessary now, more than ever, to learn how to think with Arendt, a time that has delivered us moral and political catastrophes, which while not exceeding her day, strongly resemble and are directly linked to those she directly confronted. Postcolonial conflicts, revolutions and occupations, wars of annihilation and crimes against humanity, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and accusations of Islamo-fascism — these are among the social forces relating and separating peoples and states through organised violence.Less
Arendt's apparent exclusion of violence from politics — her definitionally-enforced distinction — actually linked politics and war together in a historically and conceptually rich relationship. She criticized the dominant Western traditions of social and political thought for borrowing their models of politics from the realm of organised violence, of command and obedience. But it is her political thought that is deeply influenced by the enduring significance of war. It may be necessary now, more than ever, to learn how to think with Arendt, a time that has delivered us moral and political catastrophes, which while not exceeding her day, strongly resemble and are directly linked to those she directly confronted. Postcolonial conflicts, revolutions and occupations, wars of annihilation and crimes against humanity, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and accusations of Islamo-fascism — these are among the social forces relating and separating peoples and states through organised violence.
David Miller
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198278641
- eISBN:
- 9780191599903
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198278640.003.0011
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
If politics is a process whereby collective decisions are reached from an initial position of disagreement, there are two conceptions of how this should happen. Politics as interest‐aggregation looks ...
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If politics is a process whereby collective decisions are reached from an initial position of disagreement, there are two conceptions of how this should happen. Politics as interest‐aggregation looks for a procedure whereby pre‐existing preferences can be fairly aggregated (e.g. majority voting). In contrast, politics as dialogue emphasizes the giving of reasons by participants, which allows even those who disagree with the final outcome to regard it as legitimate. Arendt and Habermas present sharply opposed, but unacceptable, versions of the latter view. A more realistic alternative would involve narrowing the scope of political debate, and focusing on the conditions under which citizens are willing to set aside their personal interests in order to represent the public as a whole.Less
If politics is a process whereby collective decisions are reached from an initial position of disagreement, there are two conceptions of how this should happen. Politics as interest‐aggregation looks for a procedure whereby pre‐existing preferences can be fairly aggregated (e.g. majority voting). In contrast, politics as dialogue emphasizes the giving of reasons by participants, which allows even those who disagree with the final outcome to regard it as legitimate. Arendt and Habermas present sharply opposed, but unacceptable, versions of the latter view. A more realistic alternative would involve narrowing the scope of political debate, and focusing on the conditions under which citizens are willing to set aside their personal interests in order to represent the public as a whole.
Carl A. Raschke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231173841
- eISBN:
- 9780231539623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231173841.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
An understanding of the political as simply the symbolic interactivity that warrants a more purposeful and self-conscious strategy of “living together” is not in itself sufficient. Moreover, when ...
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An understanding of the political as simply the symbolic interactivity that warrants a more purposeful and self-conscious strategy of “living together” is not in itself sufficient. Moreover, when these mechanisms of solidarity are themselves vitiated by economic forces, especially as “natural” tendencies are manipulated and corrupted by the intervention of the state—the political itself becomes increasingly problematic. At that point, political economy itself breaks down and what James Joyce termed the “terror of history” rears its monstrous head. Statecraft seems to substitute for the political, but in the vacuum of the latter an even darker specter is gestating. It is the specter of the militant, the specter of revolution.Less
An understanding of the political as simply the symbolic interactivity that warrants a more purposeful and self-conscious strategy of “living together” is not in itself sufficient. Moreover, when these mechanisms of solidarity are themselves vitiated by economic forces, especially as “natural” tendencies are manipulated and corrupted by the intervention of the state—the political itself becomes increasingly problematic. At that point, political economy itself breaks down and what James Joyce termed the “terror of history” rears its monstrous head. Statecraft seems to substitute for the political, but in the vacuum of the latter an even darker specter is gestating. It is the specter of the militant, the specter of revolution.
Ben Berger
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691144689
- eISBN:
- 9781400840311
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691144689.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Democratization
Handwringing about political apathy is as old as democracy itself. As early as 425 BC, the playwright Aristophanes ridiculed his fellow Athenians for gossiping in the market instead of voting. In ...
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Handwringing about political apathy is as old as democracy itself. As early as 425 BC, the playwright Aristophanes ridiculed his fellow Athenians for gossiping in the market instead of voting. In more recent decades, calls for greater civic engagement as a democratic cure-all have met with widespread agreement. But how realistic, or helpful, is it to expect citizens to devote more attention and energy to politics? This book provides a surprising new perspective on the problem of civic engagement, challenging idealists who aspire to revolutionize democracies and their citizens, but also taking issue with cynics who think that citizens cannot, and need not, do better. “Civic engagement” has become an unwieldy and confusing catchall, the book argues. We should talk instead of political, social, and moral engagement, figuring out which kinds of engagement make democracy work better, and how we might promote them. Focusing on political engagement and taking Alexis de Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt as guides, the book identifies ways to achieve the political engagement we want and need without resorting to coercive measures such as compulsory national service or mandatory voting. By providing a realistic account of the value of political engagement and practical strategies for improving it, while avoiding proposals we can never hope to achieve, the book makes a persuasive case for a public philosophy that much of the public can actually endorse.Less
Handwringing about political apathy is as old as democracy itself. As early as 425 BC, the playwright Aristophanes ridiculed his fellow Athenians for gossiping in the market instead of voting. In more recent decades, calls for greater civic engagement as a democratic cure-all have met with widespread agreement. But how realistic, or helpful, is it to expect citizens to devote more attention and energy to politics? This book provides a surprising new perspective on the problem of civic engagement, challenging idealists who aspire to revolutionize democracies and their citizens, but also taking issue with cynics who think that citizens cannot, and need not, do better. “Civic engagement” has become an unwieldy and confusing catchall, the book argues. We should talk instead of political, social, and moral engagement, figuring out which kinds of engagement make democracy work better, and how we might promote them. Focusing on political engagement and taking Alexis de Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt as guides, the book identifies ways to achieve the political engagement we want and need without resorting to coercive measures such as compulsory national service or mandatory voting. By providing a realistic account of the value of political engagement and practical strategies for improving it, while avoiding proposals we can never hope to achieve, the book makes a persuasive case for a public philosophy that much of the public can actually endorse.
Karen Zivi
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826414
- eISBN:
- 9780199919437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826414.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, Democratization
This chapter suggests that we need to think of rights claims as claims of persuasion rather than as trumping claims, a shift that involves more fully appreciating them as perlocutionary utterances ...
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This chapter suggests that we need to think of rights claims as claims of persuasion rather than as trumping claims, a shift that involves more fully appreciating them as perlocutionary utterances that have uncertain effects. It draws on the work of Arendt to develop an understanding of persuasion as a performative political practice that recognizes the plurality of individual perspectives and the impossibility of definitive political outcomes. It then explore J.S. Mill’s rights theory and politics to illustrate what a persuasive politics of rights looks like and to reveal its democratic potential. It thus challenges those traditional readings of Mill that interpret him as advancing a liberal individualism at odds with democratic values and practices.Less
This chapter suggests that we need to think of rights claims as claims of persuasion rather than as trumping claims, a shift that involves more fully appreciating them as perlocutionary utterances that have uncertain effects. It draws on the work of Arendt to develop an understanding of persuasion as a performative political practice that recognizes the plurality of individual perspectives and the impossibility of definitive political outcomes. It then explore J.S. Mill’s rights theory and politics to illustrate what a persuasive politics of rights looks like and to reveal its democratic potential. It thus challenges those traditional readings of Mill that interpret him as advancing a liberal individualism at odds with democratic values and practices.
José Fernández Vega
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232024
- eISBN:
- 9780191716133
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232024.003.0008
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
The concept of ‘art’ in Clausewitz's theory of war is linked to the aesthetic thought of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement, of which Clausewitz had some knowledge — probably through ...
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The concept of ‘art’ in Clausewitz's theory of war is linked to the aesthetic thought of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement, of which Clausewitz had some knowledge — probably through his instructor in the war school, Kiesewetter. Beyond this historical point, the chapter also shows the productivity of ‘art’ and its fellow concept ‘judgement’ for the social understanding of war. Hannah Arendt's interpretation of Kant's third Critique is used as a guide to develop the idea of war as art in Clausewitz's theory.Less
The concept of ‘art’ in Clausewitz's theory of war is linked to the aesthetic thought of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement, of which Clausewitz had some knowledge — probably through his instructor in the war school, Kiesewetter. Beyond this historical point, the chapter also shows the productivity of ‘art’ and its fellow concept ‘judgement’ for the social understanding of war. Hannah Arendt's interpretation of Kant's third Critique is used as a guide to develop the idea of war as art in Clausewitz's theory.
Ned O'Gorman
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226665023
- eISBN:
- 9780226683294
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226683294.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book is a defense of the dignity of politics in the age of its infamy. It argues that politics is an essential everyday art of relating to others–friends, neighbors, strangers, and even ...
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This book is a defense of the dignity of politics in the age of its infamy. It argues that politics is an essential everyday art of relating to others–friends, neighbors, strangers, and even suspicious others–in freedom and as equals, and that politics, rather than being the problem, is part of the solution to our twenty-first century political myopia, malaise, and malevolence. It argues that we need to do more politics, not throw it out; to take politics more seriously, not write it off; to give politics a thinking chance. It does so by exploring the works of the most articulate champion of politics in the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), a German-born Jew who fled the Nazis to take residence in the United States, where she set out to defend politics against its many detractors. Several challenges were central to Arendt’s work, and to the defense of politics in this book: the challenge of differentiating authentic politics from twisted and distorted views of politics; the difficulty we have appreciating politics; the challenge of political judgment; the problem of truth in politics; and the role of persuasion in politics. This book addresses these challenges head on and tries to stir our imaginations to see politics in a more positive light.Less
This book is a defense of the dignity of politics in the age of its infamy. It argues that politics is an essential everyday art of relating to others–friends, neighbors, strangers, and even suspicious others–in freedom and as equals, and that politics, rather than being the problem, is part of the solution to our twenty-first century political myopia, malaise, and malevolence. It argues that we need to do more politics, not throw it out; to take politics more seriously, not write it off; to give politics a thinking chance. It does so by exploring the works of the most articulate champion of politics in the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), a German-born Jew who fled the Nazis to take residence in the United States, where she set out to defend politics against its many detractors. Several challenges were central to Arendt’s work, and to the defense of politics in this book: the challenge of differentiating authentic politics from twisted and distorted views of politics; the difficulty we have appreciating politics; the challenge of political judgment; the problem of truth in politics; and the role of persuasion in politics. This book addresses these challenges head on and tries to stir our imaginations to see politics in a more positive light.
Patrick Hayden
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546732
- eISBN:
- 9780191720406
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546732.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics, International Relations and Politics
This chapter adopts a different approach to those that now regard the creation of the ICC as evidence of the progressive ‘enlightenment’ of humankind. It argues that the ICC is best characterized in ...
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This chapter adopts a different approach to those that now regard the creation of the ICC as evidence of the progressive ‘enlightenment’ of humankind. It argues that the ICC is best characterized in terms of cosmopolitan realism, that is, a critical cosmopolitanism shorn of historical and moral idealism, and motivated more by the terrifying experience of political evil than by the triumph of enlightened moral consciousness. In this sense, the cosmopolitan law underwriting the ICC can only be properly understood with constant reference to the phenomenon of political evil. The aim of this chapter is to understand how the political of the ICC's actions can be understood in terms of the ambivalence between confronting political evil and promoting its universal morality via its capacity to subject the perpetrators of evil to political judgement and legal accountability. Given these aims, the chapter attempts to understand and explain why the ICC's actions should be regarded as the latest effort to juridify evil.Less
This chapter adopts a different approach to those that now regard the creation of the ICC as evidence of the progressive ‘enlightenment’ of humankind. It argues that the ICC is best characterized in terms of cosmopolitan realism, that is, a critical cosmopolitanism shorn of historical and moral idealism, and motivated more by the terrifying experience of political evil than by the triumph of enlightened moral consciousness. In this sense, the cosmopolitan law underwriting the ICC can only be properly understood with constant reference to the phenomenon of political evil. The aim of this chapter is to understand how the political of the ICC's actions can be understood in terms of the ambivalence between confronting political evil and promoting its universal morality via its capacity to subject the perpetrators of evil to political judgement and legal accountability. Given these aims, the chapter attempts to understand and explain why the ICC's actions should be regarded as the latest effort to juridify evil.
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This book studies war in the thought of one of the 20th-century's most important and original political thinkers, Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt's writing was fundamentally rooted in her understanding ...
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This book studies war in the thought of one of the 20th-century's most important and original political thinkers, Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt's writing was fundamentally rooted in her understanding of war and its political significance. But this element of her work has surprisingly been neglected in international and political theory. This book assesses the full range of Arendt's historical and conceptual writing on war and introduces to international theory the distinct language she used to talk about war and the political world. It builds on her re-thinking of old concepts such as power, violence, greatness, world, imperialism, evil, hypocrisy, and humanity and introduces some that are new to international thought like plurality, action, agonism, natality, and political immortality. Chapters engage Arendt's writing in dialogue with various schools of political and international theory, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, post-structuralism, post-colonial thought, neoconservatism, and Habermas-inspired critical theory. Re-reading Arendt's writing — forged through firsthand experience of occupation and struggles for liberation, political founding, and resistance in time of war — reveals a more serious engagement with war than her earlier readers have recognised. Arendt's political theory makes more sense when it is understood in the context of her thinking about war and we can think about the history and theory of warfare, and international politics in new ways by thinking with Arendt.Less
This book studies war in the thought of one of the 20th-century's most important and original political thinkers, Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt's writing was fundamentally rooted in her understanding of war and its political significance. But this element of her work has surprisingly been neglected in international and political theory. This book assesses the full range of Arendt's historical and conceptual writing on war and introduces to international theory the distinct language she used to talk about war and the political world. It builds on her re-thinking of old concepts such as power, violence, greatness, world, imperialism, evil, hypocrisy, and humanity and introduces some that are new to international thought like plurality, action, agonism, natality, and political immortality. Chapters engage Arendt's writing in dialogue with various schools of political and international theory, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, post-structuralism, post-colonial thought, neoconservatism, and Habermas-inspired critical theory. Re-reading Arendt's writing — forged through firsthand experience of occupation and struggles for liberation, political founding, and resistance in time of war — reveals a more serious engagement with war than her earlier readers have recognised. Arendt's political theory makes more sense when it is understood in the context of her thinking about war and we can think about the history and theory of warfare, and international politics in new ways by thinking with Arendt.
Isaac Ariail Reed
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226689319
- eISBN:
- 9780226689593
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226689593.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
In Power in Modernity, Isaac Ariail Reed proposes a new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination. Chains of power and their representation, linking together ...
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In Power in Modernity, Isaac Ariail Reed proposes a new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination. Chains of power and their representation, linking together groups and individuals across time and space, create a vast network of intersecting alliances, subordinations, redistributions, and violent exclusions. Reed traces the common action of “sending someone else to do something for you”—reformulating via cultural sociology classic theories of principal and agent—as it expands outward into the hierarchies that control territories, persons, artifacts, minds, and money. He mobilizes this theory to investigate the onset of modernity in the Atlantic world, with a focus on rebellion, revolution, and state-formation in colonial North America, the early American republic, and the English Civil war and French Revolution. Modernity, Reed argues, dismantled the “King’s Two Bodies”—the monarch’s physical body and his ethereal, sacred second body that encompassed the body politic—as a schema of representation for forging power relations. This leads to a new understanding of the democratic possibilities and violent exclusions forged in the name of “the people,” as revolutionaries sought new ways to secure delegation, build hierarchy, and attack alterity. Reconsidering the role of myth in modern politics, he proposes to see the creative destruction and eternal recurrence of the King’s Two Bodies as constitutive of the modern attitude, and thus as a new starting point for critical theory. Modernity poses in a new way an eternal human question: what does it mean to be the author of one’s own actions?Less
In Power in Modernity, Isaac Ariail Reed proposes a new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination. Chains of power and their representation, linking together groups and individuals across time and space, create a vast network of intersecting alliances, subordinations, redistributions, and violent exclusions. Reed traces the common action of “sending someone else to do something for you”—reformulating via cultural sociology classic theories of principal and agent—as it expands outward into the hierarchies that control territories, persons, artifacts, minds, and money. He mobilizes this theory to investigate the onset of modernity in the Atlantic world, with a focus on rebellion, revolution, and state-formation in colonial North America, the early American republic, and the English Civil war and French Revolution. Modernity, Reed argues, dismantled the “King’s Two Bodies”—the monarch’s physical body and his ethereal, sacred second body that encompassed the body politic—as a schema of representation for forging power relations. This leads to a new understanding of the democratic possibilities and violent exclusions forged in the name of “the people,” as revolutionaries sought new ways to secure delegation, build hierarchy, and attack alterity. Reconsidering the role of myth in modern politics, he proposes to see the creative destruction and eternal recurrence of the King’s Two Bodies as constitutive of the modern attitude, and thus as a new starting point for critical theory. Modernity poses in a new way an eternal human question: what does it mean to be the author of one’s own actions?
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
Arendt is often considered to be one of the leading writers on political non-violence. She was the theorist of political speech as action and claimed on numerous occasions that violence was mute and ...
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Arendt is often considered to be one of the leading writers on political non-violence. She was the theorist of political speech as action and claimed on numerous occasions that violence was mute and brought the death of politics. However, her writings on war and violence are more subtle and important than have been originally thought. The vast secondary literature on Arendt is sophisticated and broad but it has underestimated this engagement with war by equating war with brute violence and focussing on those passages in which she does indeed exclude violence from being properly political. Pulling together the threads of violence and war in Arendt's writing suggests that her treatment of the subjects is as illuminating as the classical sociology tradition and more compelling than some of the more recent work in the political theory of war.Less
Arendt is often considered to be one of the leading writers on political non-violence. She was the theorist of political speech as action and claimed on numerous occasions that violence was mute and brought the death of politics. However, her writings on war and violence are more subtle and important than have been originally thought. The vast secondary literature on Arendt is sophisticated and broad but it has underestimated this engagement with war by equating war with brute violence and focussing on those passages in which she does indeed exclude violence from being properly political. Pulling together the threads of violence and war in Arendt's writing suggests that her treatment of the subjects is as illuminating as the classical sociology tradition and more compelling than some of the more recent work in the political theory of war.
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This chapter sets out and analyses Arendt's understandings of the basic meanings of politics and war, violence, and power. Her definition of power — a collective capacity that emerges between people ...
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This chapter sets out and analyses Arendt's understandings of the basic meanings of politics and war, violence, and power. Her definition of power — a collective capacity that emerges between people as they act together — is supported through a number of historical examples. Her position on partisan warfare and the uses and limitations of revolutionary violence are contrasted with the important writing on these subjects by Schmitt and Fanon. Arendt shared with Clausewitz a view of war as an act of force whose essence is violent combat. However, political action, though sometimes occurring during wartime, is fundamentally different. Politics is full of conflict. But it is also limited by plurality, the very condition for speech and political action among equals. In contrast to post-structuralist accounts, Arendt maintained that a distinction between politics and war was indeed possible and necessary for there to be politics at all.Less
This chapter sets out and analyses Arendt's understandings of the basic meanings of politics and war, violence, and power. Her definition of power — a collective capacity that emerges between people as they act together — is supported through a number of historical examples. Her position on partisan warfare and the uses and limitations of revolutionary violence are contrasted with the important writing on these subjects by Schmitt and Fanon. Arendt shared with Clausewitz a view of war as an act of force whose essence is violent combat. However, political action, though sometimes occurring during wartime, is fundamentally different. Politics is full of conflict. But it is also limited by plurality, the very condition for speech and political action among equals. In contrast to post-structuralist accounts, Arendt maintained that a distinction between politics and war was indeed possible and necessary for there to be politics at all.
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This chapter addresses Arendt's method of thinking about politics and war. It was a fundamental conviction that the most significant changes in social and political life could not be understood ...
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This chapter addresses Arendt's method of thinking about politics and war. It was a fundamental conviction that the most significant changes in social and political life could not be understood through the projection of continuous historical laws. It was the nature of both politics and war to bring about the unexpected. Inspired, in part, by the tradition of historiography that emerged out of the realist writing of Homer and Thucydides, Arendt argued that it was essential to divorce the meaning of events from our ethical judgement of them. We should and do make ethical judgements. The difference is that we must also pay attention to the distinctly political criteria for judging action, which Arendt believed to be greatness. This understanding of the history of war and forms of agency in wartime is illustrated with the case of suicide bombing. ‘Who’, if anyone, is revealed in such acts?Less
This chapter addresses Arendt's method of thinking about politics and war. It was a fundamental conviction that the most significant changes in social and political life could not be understood through the projection of continuous historical laws. It was the nature of both politics and war to bring about the unexpected. Inspired, in part, by the tradition of historiography that emerged out of the realist writing of Homer and Thucydides, Arendt argued that it was essential to divorce the meaning of events from our ethical judgement of them. We should and do make ethical judgements. The difference is that we must also pay attention to the distinctly political criteria for judging action, which Arendt believed to be greatness. This understanding of the history of war and forms of agency in wartime is illustrated with the case of suicide bombing. ‘Who’, if anyone, is revealed in such acts?
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This chapter looks at Arendt's historical analysis of a form of war that still shapes the contemporary world. In particular, the chapter assesses her farsighted and prescient claim that late ...
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This chapter looks at Arendt's historical analysis of a form of war that still shapes the contemporary world. In particular, the chapter assesses her farsighted and prescient claim that late 19th-century wars of imperial conquest helped sow the seeds of 20th-century total war in Europe. The implications are potentially great for how we might think through the social and political processes unwittingly unleashed by various forms of violence, including so-called ‘small wars’. Arendt's writing on imperialism and European total war also reveal some of the flaws in conventional military history and strategic studies which has understood these practices as unrelated. Arendt points us toward relationships that are much closer to Clausewitz's more fundamental insight about war as a social process that transcends the nation-state. Moreover, Arendt may have been the first to articulate what today we call ‘blowback’ and she termed the ‘boomerang effect’.Less
This chapter looks at Arendt's historical analysis of a form of war that still shapes the contemporary world. In particular, the chapter assesses her farsighted and prescient claim that late 19th-century wars of imperial conquest helped sow the seeds of 20th-century total war in Europe. The implications are potentially great for how we might think through the social and political processes unwittingly unleashed by various forms of violence, including so-called ‘small wars’. Arendt's writing on imperialism and European total war also reveal some of the flaws in conventional military history and strategic studies which has understood these practices as unrelated. Arendt points us toward relationships that are much closer to Clausewitz's more fundamental insight about war as a social process that transcends the nation-state. Moreover, Arendt may have been the first to articulate what today we call ‘blowback’ and she termed the ‘boomerang effect’.
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This chapter explores the implications of Arendt's historical and conceptual account of the relationship between Greek and Roman war, law, and territorial expansion for the laws of war in the ...
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This chapter explores the implications of Arendt's historical and conceptual account of the relationship between Greek and Roman war, law, and territorial expansion for the laws of war in the contemporary period. Arendt understood the importance of law and territorial boundaries as the principle limitations on the otherwise unpredictability and boundlessness of political action. Unfortunately, the centrality of power and the constitutive relationship between law, war, and expansion has been neglected in much international thought. This tradition has been less good at asking questions about the productive or constitutive character of the law. This is illustrated through a discussion of the dominant liberal assumptions that have shaped most international legal thought and their role in making ‘accidental’ civilian casualties normal. Rather than frame questions about law and war in the language of compliance we can ask how civilian deaths are legitimated and under what guises does this occur.Less
This chapter explores the implications of Arendt's historical and conceptual account of the relationship between Greek and Roman war, law, and territorial expansion for the laws of war in the contemporary period. Arendt understood the importance of law and territorial boundaries as the principle limitations on the otherwise unpredictability and boundlessness of political action. Unfortunately, the centrality of power and the constitutive relationship between law, war, and expansion has been neglected in much international thought. This tradition has been less good at asking questions about the productive or constitutive character of the law. This is illustrated through a discussion of the dominant liberal assumptions that have shaped most international legal thought and their role in making ‘accidental’ civilian casualties normal. Rather than frame questions about law and war in the language of compliance we can ask how civilian deaths are legitimated and under what guises does this occur.
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
Arendt was wholly ambivalent about the liberal discourse of human rights and by extension, it is argued, wars justified in their name. She can be read as far less sanguine about the apparent ...
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Arendt was wholly ambivalent about the liberal discourse of human rights and by extension, it is argued, wars justified in their name. She can be read as far less sanguine about the apparent progressiveness of human rights ideologies than other of her readers have suggested. This argument is made through an analysis of her writing on violence and hypocrisy. Arendt's work is filled with examples of violent rage against hypocrisy, but also how hypocrisy can enable cruelty. Above all, Arendt was a defender of the created, public world where it is only possible to judge words and actions, not motives. And yet Arendt does not leave us without grounds to act against genocide. These grounds are not based on the large numbers of dead, on levels of cruelty as such. Wars of annihilation cannot be tolerated because they attack the fundamental basis of all politics which is human plurality.Less
Arendt was wholly ambivalent about the liberal discourse of human rights and by extension, it is argued, wars justified in their name. She can be read as far less sanguine about the apparent progressiveness of human rights ideologies than other of her readers have suggested. This argument is made through an analysis of her writing on violence and hypocrisy. Arendt's work is filled with examples of violent rage against hypocrisy, but also how hypocrisy can enable cruelty. Above all, Arendt was a defender of the created, public world where it is only possible to judge words and actions, not motives. And yet Arendt does not leave us without grounds to act against genocide. These grounds are not based on the large numbers of dead, on levels of cruelty as such. Wars of annihilation cannot be tolerated because they attack the fundamental basis of all politics which is human plurality.
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
Arendt articulated the dangers of moralism in the political realm that avoids realist cynicism. She is better placed to challenge the neoconservative vision of international affairs, ideological ...
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Arendt articulated the dangers of moralism in the political realm that avoids realist cynicism. She is better placed to challenge the neoconservative vision of international affairs, ideological conviction, and their relationship to democratic society. Reading Arendt against Leo Strauss suggests that the fundamental problem with neoconservative ideology concerns its understanding of the place of philosophy in the public realm, the relationship between political thought and practice, ideas, and action. This sheds light on contemporary neoconservative claims about the power of ideas to change the world (through the invasion and occupation of Iraq), and widespread, but misguided, claims about their propensity to condone political lies. There is always a temptation to lie in politics because the lie is an intervention into the common world. This is only made worse by ideological thinking. Neoconservatives may be experts at selling wars but seem less adept at winning them.Less
Arendt articulated the dangers of moralism in the political realm that avoids realist cynicism. She is better placed to challenge the neoconservative vision of international affairs, ideological conviction, and their relationship to democratic society. Reading Arendt against Leo Strauss suggests that the fundamental problem with neoconservative ideology concerns its understanding of the place of philosophy in the public realm, the relationship between political thought and practice, ideas, and action. This sheds light on contemporary neoconservative claims about the power of ideas to change the world (through the invasion and occupation of Iraq), and widespread, but misguided, claims about their propensity to condone political lies. There is always a temptation to lie in politics because the lie is an intervention into the common world. This is only made worse by ideological thinking. Neoconservatives may be experts at selling wars but seem less adept at winning them.
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0008
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This chapter contrasts Arendt's writing with Jürgen Habermas who has argued that humanitarian intervention is justified, in part, because it places international relations on the path toward ...
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This chapter contrasts Arendt's writing with Jürgen Habermas who has argued that humanitarian intervention is justified, in part, because it places international relations on the path toward cosmopolitan society, a global public realm. Habermas has unwittingly — and perhaps surprisingly — endorsed a model of global political founding that has something in common with Machiavelli's notion of politics and violence being two sides of the same coin. Habermas envisages a political end, a global public; ‘humanitarian’ war is endorsed as a means to make it. Arendt's judgement is more sobering. Her account of founding and political freedom foregoes the temptation to reduce politics to a relationship between ends and means. She held a deeply ambivalent view of the concept of and justifications for political action based on ‘humanity’. Her thought was rarely couched in what she took to be the rather abstract and even dangerous language of humanitarianism.Less
This chapter contrasts Arendt's writing with Jürgen Habermas who has argued that humanitarian intervention is justified, in part, because it places international relations on the path toward cosmopolitan society, a global public realm. Habermas has unwittingly — and perhaps surprisingly — endorsed a model of global political founding that has something in common with Machiavelli's notion of politics and violence being two sides of the same coin. Habermas envisages a political end, a global public; ‘humanitarian’ war is endorsed as a means to make it. Arendt's judgement is more sobering. Her account of founding and political freedom foregoes the temptation to reduce politics to a relationship between ends and means. She held a deeply ambivalent view of the concept of and justifications for political action based on ‘humanity’. Her thought was rarely couched in what she took to be the rather abstract and even dangerous language of humanitarianism.
Steve Buckler
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748639021
- eISBN:
- 9780748652853
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748639021.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Hannah Arendt's work has been noted for its unorthodox and eclectic style. This book aims to show that her unusual approach in fact reflects a consistent and distinctive conception of, and way of ...
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Hannah Arendt's work has been noted for its unorthodox and eclectic style. This book aims to show that her unusual approach in fact reflects a consistent and distinctive conception of, and way of doing, political theory. This is established through close readings of her most influential works. In light of these readings, the book argues that Arendt's work is of continuing relevance in offering an important and challenging alternative to the more orthodox methods that are characteristic of modern political theory in both its analytical and post-analytical forms. The book discusses Arendt's key works — The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition and On Revolution — alongside her less-well-known and posthumously published writing; shows how Arendt framed problems with respect to specific concerns in the modern polity and democratic culture; and considers Arendt's views on totalitarianism, political theory, the concept of action, revolutions, political ethics and the role of the thinker.Less
Hannah Arendt's work has been noted for its unorthodox and eclectic style. This book aims to show that her unusual approach in fact reflects a consistent and distinctive conception of, and way of doing, political theory. This is established through close readings of her most influential works. In light of these readings, the book argues that Arendt's work is of continuing relevance in offering an important and challenging alternative to the more orthodox methods that are characteristic of modern political theory in both its analytical and post-analytical forms. The book discusses Arendt's key works — The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition and On Revolution — alongside her less-well-known and posthumously published writing; shows how Arendt framed problems with respect to specific concerns in the modern polity and democratic culture; and considers Arendt's views on totalitarianism, political theory, the concept of action, revolutions, political ethics and the role of the thinker.
Peter M. R. Stirk
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748622900
- eISBN:
- 9780748652730
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622900.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
Germany, as Europe's most powerful state, has a political significance that underlines the importance of twentieth-century German political thought. Yet this tradition has been poorly represented in ...
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Germany, as Europe's most powerful state, has a political significance that underlines the importance of twentieth-century German political thought. Yet this tradition has been poorly represented in academic literature. This book offers an account of German political thought, emphasising its diversity and contested nature, and gives an overview of the subject that allows access to relatively unknown figures as well as the ‘names’ of the tradition (Weber, Schmitt, Arendt, Habermas). The book also demonstrates the political significance of figures better known in other disciplines including law and sociology. The book is organised chronologically, with a series of recurrent themes providing analytic unity: the nature of politics (including political vocation and leadership, and definitions of politics), collective identity, the rule of law, the role of the state, the role of political parties and the nature of parliamentary democracy, state intervention in society and the economy and, finally, the international order. Pedagogical features include a glossary of German terms and a substantial set of biographical notes identifying the major theorists referred to in the text.Less
Germany, as Europe's most powerful state, has a political significance that underlines the importance of twentieth-century German political thought. Yet this tradition has been poorly represented in academic literature. This book offers an account of German political thought, emphasising its diversity and contested nature, and gives an overview of the subject that allows access to relatively unknown figures as well as the ‘names’ of the tradition (Weber, Schmitt, Arendt, Habermas). The book also demonstrates the political significance of figures better known in other disciplines including law and sociology. The book is organised chronologically, with a series of recurrent themes providing analytic unity: the nature of politics (including political vocation and leadership, and definitions of politics), collective identity, the rule of law, the role of the state, the role of political parties and the nature of parliamentary democracy, state intervention in society and the economy and, finally, the international order. Pedagogical features include a glossary of German terms and a substantial set of biographical notes identifying the major theorists referred to in the text.
