Arendt and Republican Thought

Authors

  • Wolfgang Heuer

Keywords:

Arendt, republicanism, republic, councils

Abstract

Is Arendt a republican? If one takes into account her emphasis on action, the
horizontal formation of power and the foundation of the civic republic, one can only
answer this question in the affirmative. But if one takes the republican discourse of
Pettit (freedom as freedom from interference), Viroli and Skinner (civic virtue) or
Richter (good government) (Pettit, 1997; Viroli, 2002; Skinner, 1998; Richter, 2004)
as a yardstick, doubts arise.
The results of Arendt's analyses remain fragmentary and have elicited critical
comments referring to the broad incompatibility of Arendt's pure definition of
power, action, and politics/society with liberal society. What is overlooked in these
readings is precisely the great potential for critique that goes hand in hand with this
supposed detachment from reality. I would like to illustrate this with two examples:
firstly, Arendt's definition of power, which focuses not on the parliamentary and
party system of representation, but on participatory citizenship, and secondly,
Arendt's reflections on councils -councils- as an original form of organizing action.
In this article, we will examine the meaning of phenomena containing also the
potential of their possibilities: the between of intersubjectivity, the role of the
person, impartial thinking and cosmopolitan judgment, the institutionalization of
plurality in the form of federalism and, finally, the method of poetic thinking and the
role of emotions.
In doing so, we will encounter the significance of Arendt's particular way of thinking,
which is expressed in the difference in the title of this essay: between a republican
thought that revolves around the conceptual characteristics of the republic in terms
of political science (republican thought) and Arendt's thought, which is itself
republican in its activity and shapes content and form together (republican thought).

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Published

2023-08-18

Issue

Section

Studies and Notes - Dossier

How to Cite

Arendt and Republican Thought. (2023). Pescadora De Perlas. Revista De Estudios Arendtianos, 2(2), 217-248. https://revistas.psi.unc.edu.ar/index.php/pescadoradeperlas/article/view/40411