Abstract
While ostensibly tracking the distinctiveness of the “physiognomy of the twentieth century,” Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution brings a number of other historical horizons into view. Antiquity, the late eighteenth century and the contemporary condition continually merge in her analysis. Arendt’s discussion thus provides a telling counterpart to Karl Marx’s description of the role of antiquity in the French Revolution in the Eighteenth Brumaire. The chapter argues that it is by coming to terms with the notion of revolution that Arendt defines and refines her concept of the political, a concept which emerges from the confluence between antiquity, the revolutions of the eighteenth century and the democratic uprisings of the twentieth century.
This essay is based on an article published in the journal Classical Philology 113, no. 1. ©2018 by The University of Chicago.
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Notes
- 1.
Hannah Arendt, The Originsof Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1976).
- 2.
Jonathan Schell, “Introduction,” in On Revolution, ed. Hannah Arendt (London: Penguin Books, 2006), xiii.
- 3.
Ibid., xiv.
- 4.
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 1.
- 5.
Ibid., 1.
- 6.
On the controversy surrounding Arendt’s exclusion of the “social” see most influentially Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
- 7.
Hannah Arendt, TheHuman Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 28.
- 8.
Ibid., 30–31.
- 9.
See Wellmer who sees On Revolution as reckoning with the dual forces of liberalism and Marxism. Albrecht Wellmer, “Arendt on Revolution,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, ed. Dana Villa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 220–42.
- 10.
Arendt, TheHuman Condition, 54.
- 11.
Aristotle, Politics 1.2.
- 12.
Arendt, TheHuman Condition, 2.
- 13.
Arendt, On Revolution, 10.
- 14.
Ibid., 11.
- 15.
Arendt discusses the etymology of the word at ibid., 25–26, 32–34.
- 16.
Arendt, On Revolution, 19.
- 17.
See Sanja Perovic, The Calendar in Revolutionary France: Perceptions of Time in Literature, Culture, Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- 18.
On the revolution as drama see Rebecca Comay, Mourning Sickness: Hegeland the French Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
- 19.
For Arendt on tragedy, see Robert C. Pirro, Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); and Miriam Leonard, Tragic Modernities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
- 20.
Arendt, On Revolution, 24.
- 21.
Ibid., 24.
- 22.
Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” trans. Terrell Carver, in Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: (Post)modern Interpretations, ed. Mark Cowling and James Martin (London: Pluto Press, 2002), 19–20.
- 23.
To quote Derrida, see Richard Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage: Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Herbert Marcuse, Stanislas Breton, Jacques Derrida (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 112.
- 24.
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt and trans. Harry Zohn (London: Collins-Fontana Books, 1973), 263.
- 25.
Mark Cowling and James Martin, “Introduction,” in Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: (Post)modern Interpretations, ed. Cowling and Martin, 5.
- 26.
Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” 20.
- 27.
Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994), 110.
- 28.
Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” 20.
- 29.
Arendt, On Revolution, 111–12.
- 30.
Ibid., 25
- 31.
Arendt, TheHuman Condition, 9.
- 32.
Ibid., 9.
- 33.
Ibid., 247.
- 34.
Armand D’Angour, The Greeks and the New: Novelty in the Greek Imagination and Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 11.
- 35.
Paul Cartledge, “Writing the History of Archaic Greek Political Thought,” in Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence, ed. Nick Fischer and Hans van Wees (London and Swansea: Duckworth with The Classical Press of Wales, 1998), 381.
- 36.
D’Angour, The Greeks and the New, 136.
- 37.
For a powerful reading of this same passage, see Peter Euben, Platonic Noise (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
- 38.
Arendt, On Revolution, 273; and Sophocles,Oedipus at Colonus, 1225–29, 1143–44.
- 39.
It is important to note that totalitarianism is like the inverse of action. It brings something new to the earth. It is not an expression of care for the earth so it is not action, but it is new and it is creative. It is hope-killing but it is not deterministic, in fact, it is the effect of freely taken human actions and choices.
- 40.
Arendt, TheHuman Condition, 246.
- 41.
Arendt, On Revolution, 18.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1976.
———. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
———. On Revolution. London: Penguin Books, 2006.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Edited with an introduction by Hannah Arendt and translated by Harry Zohn. London: Collins-Fontana Books, 1973.
Cartledge, Paul. 1998. “Writing the History of Archaic Greek Political Thought.” In Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence, edited by Nick Fischer and Hans van Wees, 379–99. London and Swansea: Duckworth with The Classical Press of Wales, 1998.
Comay, Rebecca. Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
Cowling, Mark, and James Martin, eds. Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: (Post)modern Interpretations. London: Pluto Press, 2002.
D’Angour, Armand. The Greeks and the New: Novelty in the Greek Imagination and Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Derrida, Jacques. Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. London: Routledge, 1994.
Euben, Peter. Platonic Noise. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Kearney, Richard. Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage—Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Herbert Marcuse, Stanislas Breton, Jacques Derrida. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.
Leonard, Miriam. Tragic Modernities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Marx, Karl. “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” Translated by Terrell Carver. In Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: (Post)modern Interpretations, edited by Mark Cowling and James Martin, 19–112. London: Pluto Press, 2002.
Perovic, Sanja. The Calendar in Revolutionary France: Perceptions of Time in Literature, Culture, Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Pirro, Robert C. Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000.
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Schell, Jonathan. “Introduction.” In Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, xi–xxix. London: Penguin Books, 2006.
Wellmer, Albrecht. “Arendt on Revolution.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, edited by Dana Villa, 220–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
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Leonard, M. (2019). Arendt’s Revolutionary Antiquity. In: Hiruta, K. (eds) Arendt on Freedom, Liberation, and Revolution. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11695-8_8
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