The Ontological Grounding of Hannah Arendt’s Political Ethics

ABSTRACT

This paper examines Hannah Arendt’s account of the relationship between politics and morality. Many critics have argued that Arendt’s conception of political action lacks any moral foundations, while others have tried to focus on her understanding of thinking as a normative source of her ethics. In contrast to these views, I present an alternative explanation and argue that the sources of Arendt’s political ethics are located neither in the faculty of thinking nor in extrapolitical moral norms or rules, but in the ontological conditions of action, specifically worldliness, natality and plurality. This interpretation allows us to make sense of Arendt’s fragmented, unsystematic accounts of the various virtues and moral dispositions required for authentic politics: courage, responsibility, care, respect, moderation, solidarity and gratitude. In particular, an inquiry into the ontological sources of political ethics provides a solid normative grounding for the two moral dispositions—promise and forgiveness—that form an explicit “moral code” of political action for Arendt.

KEYWORDS:

• Arendt
• politics
• morality
• political ethics
• ontology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. In this article, I use the terms “morality” and “ethics” synonymously, in line with Arendt’s own usage.

^2. Benhabib, Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, 194.

^3. Benhabib, “Judgment and the Moral Foundations,” 199.

^4. Kateb, “The Judgment of Arendt,” 122.

^5. Jay, “Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views,” 348–68; Parekh, Hannah Arendt, 181–82; Wolin, Heidegger’s Children, 66–69; Pitkin, “Justice,” 342–43.

^6. For a recent noteworthy interpretation of Arendt’s ethics, see Deirdre Lauren Mahony, Hannah Arendt’s Ethics. As Mahony states, her aim is to examine “Arendt’s ethical thought in its own right, separately from her politics.” This approach differs from mine, for I attempt to identify an intrinsic link between Arendt’s understanding of authentic politics and her ethical considerations.

^7. Topolski, Arendt, Levinas and the Politics of Relationality; Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality; Schaap, Political Reconciliation; Buckler, “Ethics and the Vocation of Politics”; and Dossa, “Hannah Arendt’s Political Theory.”

^8. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 451–52, 249.

^9. Cited in Ludz, “Arendt’s Observations and Thoughts on Ethical Questions,” 802.

^10. In this article, ontological grounding, foundations or conditions refer to the fundamental forms, structures and conditions of possibility of experience, and in Arendt’s case, of an authentically political experience.

^11. See Kohn, “Thinking/Acting,” 105–34; Bradshaw, Acting and Thinking; Wielgus, “Arendt’s Phenomenology,” 9–22.

^12. Arendt, Life of the Mind, 5.

^13. Ibid., 192.

^14. Ibid., 175.

^15. Ibid., 192.

^16. Arendt, “What is Freedom,” 150–51.

^17. Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” 153.

^18. Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” 97.

^19. Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” 152.

^20. Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 181.

^21. Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” 76; Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” 153.

^22. Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” 80–81.

^23. Ibid., 106.

^24. Buckler, “Ethics and the Vocation of Politics,” 119.

^25. Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 101.

^26. Arendt, “What is Existential Philosophy,” 181.

^27. Ibid., 186.

^28. Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 53, 58. Biskowski offers a similar argument in “Practical Foundations for Political Judgment,” claiming that Arendt’s ontology of worldliness provides “substantial moral content” (867–87).

^29. Arendt, Life of the Mind, 182; Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” 93; Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” 153.

^30. Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” 79.

^31. Topolski, Arendt, Levinas and the Politics of Relationality, 90.

^32. Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” 79.

^33. Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” 155–56.

^34. Arendt, “What is Freedom,” 154.

^35. Of course, Arendt’s theory of political judgment might be seen, and has been interpreted, as a strong candidate to bridge this gap, but since she didn’t write the last installment of The Life of the Mind on judging, her scattered remarks on the meaning and function of this faculty leaves us wondering how responsibility for the world arises in the movement between thinking and judging. Dana Villa has convincingly argued in “Thinking and Judging” that Arendtian judgment should not be interpreted as collapsing the fundamental distinction between thought and action (9–28).

^36. Arendt, “Socrates,” 22.

^37. Arendt, Human Condition, 7.

^38. Arendt, Life of the Mind, 19.

^39. Arendt, Human Condition, 8.

^40. Arendt, “What is Existential Philosophy,” 186.

^41. Arendt, Human Condition, 247 (my emphasis). In “The Freedom to Be Free,” Arendt posited that “birth or human natality … is the ontological condition sine qua non of all politics” (383).

^42. Arendt, Human Condition, 222–24.

^43. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” 100–102.

^44. Ibid., 220–29.

^45. Ibid., 234–36.

^46. Ibid., 237–38.

^47. Arendt, “Introduction into Politics,” 95, 106.

^48. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 437, 440–41, 459.

^49. Arendt, Human Condition, 191.

^50. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 279.

^51. MacLachlan, “An Ethic of Plurality,” 1–15.

^52. Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 236.

^53. Arendt, Human Condition, 176–78.

^54. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, 83.

^55. On this point I agree with MacLachlan who states that Arendt “focuses on the constituting conditions of rich moral agency … rather than privileging any one normative approach or set of moral precepts for the moral agent to follow.” MacLachlan, “An Ethic of Plurality,” 5.

^56. Arendt, Human Condition, 46. Notably, Arendt links the concept of a person with the very core of morality: see Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” 57, 105; and Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” 148.

^57. Arendt, Human Condition, 45.

^58. Ibid., 179–81. See also Arendt, “Prologue,” 12–13.

^59. Arendt uses precisely the term “human dignity” in this context: see Arendt, Human Condition, 181.

^60. Arendt, Lectures on Kant‘s Political Philosophy, 70–72.

^61. Arendt, Human Condition, 26.

^62. On solidarity as more adequate to the experience of the political than compassion or pity, see Arendt, On Revolution, 79.

^63. Arendt, “On the Nature of Totalitarianism,” 337.

^64. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 451–52.

^65. Arendt, Human Condition, 238.

^66. Kateb, “Existential Values,” 371–72.

^67. Arendt, Human Condition, 246.

^68. Ibid., 237–38.

^69. Buckler, “Ethics and the Vocation of Politics,” 122.

^70. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, 83.

^71. La Caze, “The Miraculous Power of Forgiveness and the Promise,” 161.

^72. Arendt, Human Condition, 237.

^73. Ibid., 241 (emphasis in the original).

^74. Ibid., 241, 246–47.

^75. Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 103. Schaap also notes that Arendtian forgiveness is closely related and often goes hand in hand with a few other key moral virtues and dispositions, not just with mutual trust, but also with humility, care and moderation.

^76. Arendt, Human Condition, 243.

^77. Ibid.

^78. Kampowski, Arendt, Augustine, and the New Beginning, 71.

^79. Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 103.

^80. That forgiveness cannot be made an absolute moral requirement is made clear by Arendt’s insistence that some crimes, especially genocide and other mass atrocities, can be neither forgiven nor adequately punished. See Origins of Totalitarianism, 459.

^81. Arendt, Human Condition, 244.

^82. Arendt, On Revolution, 161–70.

^83. Ibid., 167.

^84. Bernstein, “Promising and Civil Disobedience,” 119.

^85. Ibid.

^86. Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 239.

^87. Bernstein, “Promising and Civil Disobedience,” 119 (my emphasis).

^88. Arendt, “Labor, Work, Action,” 307.

^89. Arendt, “Civil Disobedience,” 92.

^90. Ibid. (the first emphasis is mine).

^91. Kampowski, Arendt, Augustine and the New Beginning, 44.

^92. Curtis, “Aesthetic Foundations of Democratic Politics,” 27–52.

^93. Biskowski, “Practical Foundations for Political Judgment,” 867–87.

^94. Topolski, Arendt, Levinas, and the Politics of Relationality, 77–108.

^95. Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 234 (emphasis in the original).

^96. Ibid., 235.

^97. Chacón, “Arendt’s Denktagebuch,” 580.

^98. Gaffney, “The Pregnant Body,” 199–215.

Additional information

Funding

This work has received funding from the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT), agreement No. S-MOD-21-7.

Notes on contributors

Simas Čelutka

Simas Čelutka, PhD, is a researcher and assistant professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, at Vilnius University, Lithuania. His research interests include political philosophy, moral philosophy, phenomenology and more specifically Hannah Arendt’s philosophy.