The risks of political impotence in the republic: a reading of Arendt and Tocqueville
Keywords:
republicanism, equality, political powerlessness, powerAbstract
In what is considered her most "republican" work, On Revolution, of 1963, based on the analysis of the American and French Revolutions, Hannah Arendt focuses her reflection on the preservation and legitimization of the power generated by the new body politic born of the revolution. And also to another central question: how to prevent the egalitarian structure of the republic from slipping into the impotence of all, a threat that, in a previous text, from 1953, she had pointed out as the great risk of regimes based on equality? The danger of the political impotence of individuals in a democratic society is also a theme present in the reflections of Tocqueville, an author with whom Arendt shows a strong confluence in On Revolution, although he mentions it sparingly. This article aims to show how the problem of the powerlessness of citizens in egalitarian regimes is approached in an approximate way by the two authors and the confluences in the thought of both not only in the sense of thinking the ways for the institutionalization and preservation of power in the republic, but also the means to ensure a broad citizen participation in the public sphere, in order to preserve the republican public spirit.
References
Arendt, Hannah. (1990). On revolution. Peguin Books.
Arendt, Hannah. (1999). Desobediência civil. En Crises da república (pp. 49-90). Perspectiva.
Arendt, Hannah. (2002a). Filosofia e política. En A dignidade da política – Ensaios e conferêcias (pp. 91-115). Relume Dumará.
Arendt, Hannah. (2002b). Verdade e política. En Entre o passado e o futuro (pp. 282-325). Perspectiva.
Arendt, Hannah. (2004). Reflexões sobre Little Rock. En Responsabilidade e julgamento (pp. 261-281). Companhia das Letras.
Arendt, Hannah. (2011). Sobre a revolução. Companhia das Letras.
Arendt, Hannah. (2012). A condição humana. Forense.
Arendt, Hannah. (2013). Thoughts on politics and revolution: a commentary. Interview by Adelbert Reif. En The last interview and other conversations (p. 67-105). Melville House Publishing.
Arendt, Hannah. (2021). A grande tradição: I. Lei e poder (pp. 77-90). En Pensar sem corrimão – Compreender 1953-1975. Bazar do Tempo.
Chaves, Rosângela. (2022). O dia de glória chegou – Revolução, opinião e liberdade em Tocqueville e Arendt. Edições 70.
Canovan, Margaret. (2002). Hannah Arendt – A reinterpretation of her political thought. University of Cambridge.
Hamilton, Alexander; Jay, John; Madison, James. (2001). The federalist. Liberty Fund.
Kramnick, Isaac. (1993). Apresentação. En Madison, James; Hamilton, Alexander; Jay, John. Os artigos federalistas – 1787-1788. Nova Fronteira.
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. (1998). The attack of the blob – Hannah Arendt’s conception of the social. The University of Chicago Press.
Reinhardt, Mark. (1997). The art of being free – Taking liberties with Tocqueville, Marx and Arendt. Cornell University Press.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. (1998). A democracia na América – Leis e costumes. v. I. São Martins Fontes.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. (2000). A democracia na América – Sentimentos e opiniões. V. II. Martins Fontes.
Villa, Dana. (2008). Public freedom. Princeton University Press.
Wellmer, Albrecht. Arendt on revolution. En Villa, Dana (Ed.). The Cambridge companion to Hannah Arendt (pp. 220-241). Cambridge University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Rosângela Chaves
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Consultar los Avisos de derecho de autor. Aquellos autores/as que tengan publicaciones con esta revista, aceptan los términos siguientes:
- Los/as autores/as conservarán sus derechos de autor sobre el texto, y garantizarán a la revista el derecho de primera publicación, el cual estará simultáneamente sujeto a la Licencia de reconocimiento de Creative Commons: Atribución – No Comercial – Compartir Igual (by-nc-sa); no se permite un uso comercial de la obra original ni de las posibles obras derivadas, la distribución de las cuales se debe hacer con una licencia igual a la que regula la obra original.
- Después de la publicación, los trabajos podrán ser reproducidos por los autores en otros medios siempre que no se omita la indicación de la publicación original en esta revista. En este sentido, los autores/as podrán adoptar otros acuerdos de licencia no exclusiva de distribución de la versión de la obra publicada (p. ej.: al depositarla en un archivo institucional o publicarla en un volumen monográfico) siempre que se indique la publicación inicial en Pescadora de Perlas.
- La cesión de derechos de primera publicación de los/as autores otorga a Pescadora de Perlas autorización para que el trabajo sea colocado en el repositorio institucional de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba y difundido a través de las bases de datos.
