Evil as an expression of and a threat to human plurality: Hannah Arendt’s agonistic realism

ABSTRACT

This article challenges ‘agonistic’ readings of Arendt by demonstrating that Arendt’s work can be interpreted as ‘agonistic realism’. It argues that many agonistic readings of Arendt – I will discuss the readings of Bonnie Honig and Chantal Mouffe in particular – miss the central orientation of Arendt’s thought. By ignoring works such as The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem, contemporary agonists overlook that her preoccupation with evil forms the basis of Arendt’s agonistic thought.

The article suggests that a (re)turn to Arendt’s writings on evil, and a demonstration of their intimate relationship with works such as The Human Condition, reveals the ‘realist’ dimensions of Arendt’s thought: It reveals the picture of a thinker who is deeply concerned with the ever-present possibility of evil and who insists that perpetrators of evil must be treated as ‘enemies’. Furthermore, such a return to Arendt’s works on evil brings to the fore Arendt’s tragic insight that evil is both an expression of and a threat to human plurality and free political action. Arendt, in other words, accepts that while evil – as an expression of our humanity – can never be eradicated, it must – as a threat to our common humanity – be confronted.

KEYWORDS:

• Political agonism
• Hannah Arendt
• evil
• tragedy
• humanity

Note on contributor

Christof Royer holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews and is a Fellow at the Centre for Global Constitutionalism in St Andrews. His work addresses international political theory, with a particular focus on questions (and visions) of world order, humanitarian intervention, the Just War tradition, the problem of evil, human rights, political violence and (radical) democracy. In addressing domestic, international and global political questions, he is primarily inspired by the ideas of Aristotle, Hannah Arendt, Judith Shklar, Hans Morgenthau, Stuart Hampshire, Michel Foucault and Michael Walzer.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use the term ‘agonism’ interchangeably with ‘agonistic democracy’ or Mouffe’s ‘agonistic pluralism’.

2 For an insightful account of the agonistic critique of liberalism, see Fossen (2008).

3 ‘Realism’, no doubt, is an immensely complex and multifaceted tradition of political thought. However, what we find at the core of the realist tradition is an acute awareness of what Bernard Williams (2007, 61) calls the ‘political reality out there’ – that is, an awareness of the often-tragic realities and constraints of political life. In Arendt’s work, as I will argue, we find precisely such an awareness of the political reality of evil. The literature on political realism is vast; two outstanding contributions, however, are Bell (2009) and Sleat (2018).

4 It should be noted though, that at least Mark Wenman and Keith Breen, although they do not use the term ‘agonistic realism’, have stressed that the picture of Arendt as a ‘cheerful’ thinker is problematic. However, both contemporary agonists do so without referring to either OT and EJ and thus miss the central orientation of Arendt’s agonism.

5 In none of these works, EJ even makes it on the reference list. References to OT can be found in three essays of the edited volume on agonism and law; even in these essays, however, OT plays an insignificant role.

6 Admittedly, Honig discusses in detail Arendt’s ‘control mechanisms’ of ‘the enormous risks of action’: the practices of promises and forgiveness (2000, 84–96). Honig herself realizes, however, that promising cannot provide the stability Arendt (allegedly) expects it to provide so that the source of stability has to come from a source outside of action. And with regard to the practice of forgiveness, Honig fails to mention that Arendt writes in both OT (p.459) and HC (p.241) that ‘radical evil’ is unforgivable.

7 It should be noted, however, that Honig, in her scintillating essay on ‘agonistic feminism’ (1992), comes closer to the account of agonistic realism that I develop in this essay.

8 It might be objected that this formulation is a bit too simplistic. Rather than arguing that every person and opinion can eventually be included in the ‘conflictual consensus’, Mouffe insists that no exclusion is definitive insofar as those who are excluded (the ‘radically other’) can in principle be ‘let back in’ as soon as they accept the shared symbolic values of equality and liberty. While I sympathize with such a reading of Mouffe, I also think that this is an extremely subtle distinction that does not affect my line of argument.

9 To avoid misunderstandings, this ‘broadly similar picture’ emerges irrespective of the fact that Mouffe is highly critical of Arendt’s political theory and Honig is much more sympathetic. My point here is simply that both Mouffe and Honig downplay the ‘realist’ dimension in Arendt’s agonism by neglecting her works on evil, which, ultimately, leads to a ‘broadly similar picture’ of Arendt’s agonism that ‘celebrates’ plurality without seeing the need to ‘tame’ it.

10 It is therefore impossible to interpret Arendt’s theory of action in isolation from her writings of evil. This, however, is precisely what Villa (1992, endnote 6) deems possible when he refers to the limitations of his essay on Arendt and agonism: ‘I am concerned with Arendt's theory of action … (and) … do not attempt a comprehensive interpretation of Arendt's political thought, a project that would involve consideration of her concrete historical analyses (e.g., The Origins of Totalitarianism)’.