Abstract
During October 1953, Hannah Arendt made a short list, divided into two columns, which represents what she sought to move away from, singularity, and what she was moving towards, plurality. The purpose of the present contribution is to interpret her concept of the duality of the two-in-one as a middle term which opens up an ambiguous field that can either facilitate the movement towards plurality and human worldliness or turn the human soul towards itself, withdrawing it from the world. Exemplified by such phenomena as thinking and friendship, the duality of the two-in-one will prove to be precisely as double and dual as its name indicates. Despite Arendt’s scepticism about the capacity of thinking and friendship to bring about a common, plural world, it will be argued, in a critical discussion of her views, that she needs and treasures both phenomena enough to give them a significant role to play in the movement towards plurality.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
In the same chapter, Arendt even states, not uncontroversially, that the French concept, la peuple, from the beginning carried “the connotation of a multiheaded monster”, Arendt, 1990a, 94.
- 3.
For further discussion of possible links between totalitarianism and mass society, see John McGowan’s brief debate in Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics (1997): Totalitarianism “goes hand in hand with mass society. Various developments in European history since the French revolution foster mass society” (265).
See also: Hunt (1995, 1126), for an overview over the modern historians, such as Furet, Higonnet and Outram, who link the French Revolution to totalitarianism.
- 4.
This text has been published in a slightly different version in The Promise of Politics titled “Socrates”.
- 5.
Jaspers was the other thinker apart from Socrates, who Arendt viewed as able to combine “the ability to live doubly, both in solitude and in public.” (quoted in Berkowitz 2010, 244).
- 6.
For a defense of the three philosophers against Arendt’s not wholly convincing critique, see Holst (2013).
- 7.
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Holst, J. (2022). Singularity, Duality, Plurality: On Thoughtlessness, Friendship and Politics in Hannah Arendt’s Work. In: Robaszkiewicz, M., Matzner, T. (eds) Hannah Arendt: Challenges of Plurality. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81712-1_2
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