Hannah Arendt: Freedom And Politics, A Lecture

“Without a politically guaranteed public realm, freedom lacks the worldly space to make its appearance.”

If you think that freedom and politics have little to do with each other, what’s more, freedom is only achievable in the absence of politics, you may be wrong. In a lecture held in 1960, the philosopher Hannah Arendt makes it clear that there is an inextricable bond between the two terms - contrary to what people may believe. Admittedly, I was also initially sceptical about this link, however, reading Arendt’s thoughts brought me clarity.

Arendt explains that the origin of the word ‘politics’ can be traced back to the Ancient Greek polis. Indeed, democracy was born in the polis (or city state) of Athens along with the belief that tyranny is the worst form of government. A totalitarian rule severely limits one’s individual freedoms, so one may be tempted to believe that “more politics” means more tyranny and less freedom - however, the Ancient Greeks have shown us the opposite.

“If we really believed (…), that in politics security and life interests are all that is at stake, we would have no reason to reject tyranny; for it can certainly deliver security” states Arendt, and this is a key point in my opinion. If all we wanted was security and protection by the state, then our requirements would extend no further than matters related to survival: shelter, food and protection from enemies would be sufficient. A totalitarian rule can absolutely guarantee these, but there is much more to life than that.

What all this reminds me of is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where the foundation stones of human survival are physiological needs as well as safety. Only once these conditions have been met can people think about belonging, self-esteem and self-actualisation. The latter one is what most easily conjures up the concept of individual choices and ‘action’. Totalitarian regimes are not only least concerned about self-actualisation, they are in fact actively attempting to prevent individuals to break out from collective uniformity. Arendt argues: “if one wants to prevent humans from acting in freedom, they must be prevented from thinking, willing and producing, because all these activities imply action, and thereby freedom in every sense, including the political.” And this is how Arendt arrives at her argument that goes against the belief that freedom can only arise in the absence of politics: in a totalitarian state, freedom is abolished and simultaneously “we are dealing with the abandonment of politics”.

It is not a new idea that being allowed to think and express oneself are signs of (political) freedom - Arendt cites Montesquieu (early 18th century) who believed that people making use of their reason (raisonner) is itself a politically granted and sustained freedom. Whether people do this well or badly is less important than the fact that they are allowed to do it: “it is the sheer activity of reasoning itself from which freedom arises.”

Arendt goes on to argue that freedom coincides with action: “men are free as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and so act are the same.” To illustrate this, she reaches back to Machiavelli’s virtù (late 15th and early 16th century), which she translates as ‘virtuosity’, a skill related to the performing arts “where the accomplishment lies in the performance itself.” Arendt draws a fascinating parallel between politics and performing arts:

“Just as the virtuosity of music making or dancing or theater is dependent upon an audience to experience the performance, action also requires the presence of others in a politically organized space. Such a space is not to be taken for granted wherever men live together in a community. The Greek polis once was precisely that ‘form of government’ necessary for action.”

The lecture then moves on to consider the topics of courage, the public and private sphere, sovereignty, mass-society and inner freedom versus political freedom. I am, however, fast forwarding to the link that Arendt makes between action and miracle - perhaps this was the part that made the biggest impression on me.

In The City of God, the Christian philosopher Augustine (4th and 5th century) associates freedom with human existence based on the view that each new birth is a new beginning in the world. Arendt points out a similarity between this idea and Kant’s (18th century) view of ‘spontaneity’, a term he defined as “the ability to ‘begin a series of occurrences entirely from itself’”.

However, to get to the point, Arendt’s ingenuity lies in shedding light onto the connection between action (as new beginning) and miracles. In her own words, “all miracles interrupt some natural series of events or automatic processes, in whose context they constitute the entirely unexpected” - similarly, every new beginning “seen from the viewpoint of what has gone before, breaks into the world unexpected and unforeseen”.

Even the existence of life on earth is seen by Arendt as a chain of miracles:

“From the point of view of processes in the universe and their statistically overwhelming probabilities, the formation of the earth is an ‘infinite improbability’, as the natural scientists would say - or a miracle, as we might call it. The same is true for the formation of organic life out of inorganic processes, or the evolution of man out of the processes of organic life. In other words, every new beginning becomes a miracle the moment we look at it from the viewpoint of the processes it has interrupted.”

I find it really beautiful the way Arendt concludes her train of thought on action and miracles:

“(…) humans appear to have a highly mysterious gift for making miracles happen. This gift is called action. And insofar as action and beginning are the same, there is an element of action in every human activity that is more than a mere reaction. The simple act of production adds a new object to the world, and pure thought always brings a sequence quite by itself.”

Overall, I can summarise Arendt’s arguments in the following way: freedom is experienced in action, and the ability to act in freedom can only be ensured by politics. Therefore, freedom and politics go hand in hand. Politics is not to be seen as the imposition of a totalitarian system, since that constitutes the abandonment of politics, but instead it is to be understood as the legal framework through which the virtuosity and intentionality of humans can bring about self-actualisation far beyond toiling for basic survival and security. For Arendt, the biggest danger of totalitarianism lies in the fact that it “threatens to kill off all forms of spontaneity, that is, the action and freedom in all human activities.”

To me personally, this reading was enriching beyond my initial expectations, since it brought me a reminder to be thankful for living in a political system that values individual contribution, self-actualisation, as well as freedom of speech and thought, and it also provided me with encouragement towards action rather than passivity and cynicism, since we can never know what “miracles” our actions can bring about.