Hannah Arendt‟s Theory of the Vita Activa

Labor

Work

Action

Arendt rejects ImmanualKant‟s moral theory

Arendt returns to her phenomenological account of neighborly love in Augustine

Thinking

Willing

Judging

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What is the connection between revolutionary activity and deliberative

democratic politics?

On Arendt‟s account, the councils of the Hungarian

revolution closely resembled the Constitutional Congress

and ward system proposed by Jefferson as an alternative to

political parties, the ad hoc groupings of citizens during the

French Revolution, and the soviets that succumbed to party

unification after the Russian Revolution. Everywhere, the

building blocks of politics seem to form the same

basic shapes, only to be assembled into different forms

due to ideologies, foreign pressures, or historical

ideals. The councils predate the formation of interest

groups, they federate easily and advance their most excellent

members as representatives to more central councils. The

councilors are principally concerned with the establishment

of the polis, and so strategy often succumbs to republican

altruism.

What the councils, wards, and townships all have in

common is that they enact a vision of democratic

politics in which democracy is understood as isonomy, meaning equality both before the law and in the

legislation.

Hannah Arendt was a Jewish political theorist who fled

Germany during World War II. She is famous for her analysis of

the institutional and ideological commonalities between the

Nazis and the Russian communism under Stalin, for her

coverage of Adolf Eichmann‟s trial in which she described the

“banality of evil,” and for her analysis of the New Left and Civil

Rights movements of the 1960s.

Citizens of Kaposvár, Hungary deliberated on the topics of

employment, job creation and the employment policy of the

European Union.

What is the Vita Activa?

“Labor assures not only individual survival but the life of the

species. Work and its product, the human artifact, bestow a

measure of permanence and durability upon the futility of

mortal life and the fleeting character of human time. Action, in

so far as it engages in founding and preserving political bodies,

creates the conditions for remembrance, that is, for history.”

What is the relationship between political action and political judgment?

Arendt held that communities of like-minded individuals

supply the foundations of political action, and that the

increasing interconnection of governance and economic

management is detrimental to this civic springboard. As a

result, institutions cannot duck substantive

disagreements about justice because one of the fundamental

public goods these institutions must distribute is the

opportunity for civic engagement. In addition to devoting

their attention to the distribution of public goods, state

institutions are obligated to supply a space for action and

mutual engagement.

What did you do?

I worked with unpublished notes and

materials available through The Hannah

Arendt Papers available at the Library of

Congress in Washington, DC to

reconstruct Arendt‟s intended plan for

The Life of the Mind. The background

image of this poster is one of about

25,000 items contained within the archive.

In an attempt to fill the lacuna left by her unfinished

work, The Life of the Mind, I argue that Arendt‟s appropriation

of the Kantian sensus communis entails a theory of ethical and

political judgment centered in the community rather than the

subject. Judgment is guided and delimited by a hermeneutic

understanding of the horizons of meaning and the role

communities play in evaluating competing claims to

normativity. Arendt‟s early work on Augustine supplies an

account of the discursive and material requirements to bridge

divided communities, and I expand it with a reading of

Augustine‟s struggle to negotiate with the Donatist

schismatics. Finally, I develop the parallels between Arendt‟s

later work and contemporary democratic theories of

deliberation and public reason, focusing on her analysis of

the growing power of the administrative state and public

ignorance.

What about judging?

Of judging, we are told little explicitly: even in the extant

writing, Arendt piles up enigmatic phrases in its description: it

is a “mysterious endowment of the mind,” a “peculiar

faculty,” it decides “without any over-all rules” which renders

its unconditioned autonomy particularly vexing for the reader

seeking a definition. Arendt herself seems to be still feeling

out the shape of this faculty, describing its prerequisites in

impartiality and withdrawal from our own preferences and

perspectives. Arendt stresses that it “presupposes an

„unnatural‟ and deliberate withdrawal from involvement

and the partiality of immediate interests as they are

given by my position in the world and the part I play in

it.”

How does Arendt describe the Vita Contemplativa:?

Whereas the activities of the vita activa followed from the conditions of the

human being, the faculties of the vita contemplativa are, Arendt claims,

“unconditioned” and “autonomous.” Each corresponds to various kinds of

withdrawal from appearances and action. Thinking withdraws from

appearances completely, “de-sensing” the sensible in order to render it

intelligible. Willing withdraws from desire and consequence:“…in

order to will, the mind must withdraw from the immediacy of desire…

the will is not concerned with objects but with projects…. it transforms

the desire into an intention.”

In the second edition of The Origins of

Totalitarianism, published in 1958, Arendt appended

a commentary on the brief 1956 Hungarian

insurrection, in which she sought to apply her

insights into the historical origins of

totalitarianism in imperial domination of other

cultures. She sought to alter her account of

modern Nazism and Stalinism to fit the Hungarian

situation. Totalitarianism, Arendt argued,

combines national unity and ideological purity with

the administrative apparatus of imperialism. The

result is an unprecedented degree of state

involvement in the everyday affairs of its citizens.

Totalitarian regimes destroy communities in favor

of a purely statist administration of personal,

economic, and cultural life. On Arendt‟s view, the

horizontal relations of communal life are dissolved

in favor of vertical relationships to the regime,

such that each citizen loses the network of family,

friends, colleagues and associates that constitute

human life, and are left with nothing but a

dependence relationship to the state. Isolated from

their fellows, plurality becomes impossible, and

with it, politics dies. These horizontal relationships

are necessary for unexpected configurations to

emerge, and serve as the foundation for political

action.

Hannah Arendt’s Theory of

Deliberative Judgment

Name: Joshua A. Miller

Advisor: John Christman

Department: Philosophy

Contact: jam695@psu.edu

Special thanks for researching funding from Penn State‟s Center

for Democratic Deliberation

What is isonomy?

Arendt distinguished

totalitarianism from what she

called „isonomy‟ or home rule. The

three norms of isonomy are

mutually reinforcing: equal

participation requires that the

office-holder act with the

understanding that she might be

replaced by any other member of

the community. She cannot abuse

her office without being held to

account at the end of her term.

For the same reason she must

regularly give reciprocally

recognizable justifications for her

actions, without which her

decisions might be reversed by the

next office-holder, or even

punished when her office no

longer protects her from

prosecution. The ideal result of

such a regime is a strong

preference for deliberation,

consensus, and mutual respect,

alongside a cautious honesty and

transparency with regard to

potentially controversial decisions.

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