Arendt’s Promise to Civil Society: Bridging the Social and the Political

Abstract

In Arendt’s political theory the concept of civil society is often read as an extension of her concept of the social and is therefore dismissed as irrelevant to her political vision. This view leaves Arendtian theory in an exclusivist position with regard to contemporary political contexts and experiences. My aim in this essay is to address this problem by discussing the relationship of Arendtian theory and the concept of civil society in the context of contemporary political experience. This calls for not only a particular reading of the social in Arendt but, more importantly, for a joint reading of Arendt’s concept of the council state and civil society. Here, civil society is defined as the associations institutionalized by the voluntary engagement of active citizens, which definition, I argue, is compatible with Arendt’s concept of politics as action, plurality, and participation.

An earlier version of this essay is based on my doctoral dissertation, “Exploring the Possibilities for the Social and the Political in the Public-Private Distinction in Arendt” (2011). I presented my interpretation of Arendt’s concept of the social in the “Politics and Ethics of Civil Society” panel at the 70^th Annual Midwest Political Science Association Conference (April 2012). I would like to thank Banu Helvacıoğlu and Norma Moruzzi for their invaluable comments.

Notes

1. Bonnie Honig, “Introduction: The Arendt Question in Feminism,” in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, ed. Bonnie Honig (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1995), 1.

2. Mary G. Dietz, “Hannah Arendt and Feminist Politics,” in Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays, ed. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman (New York: SUNY Press, 1994), 20.

3. Bonnie Honig, “Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity,” in Feminist Interpretations, 136.

4. Norma Claire Moruzzi, Speaking Through the Mask: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Social Identity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 3, 154.

5. Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 177.

6. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

7. Margaret Canovan was the first to point out that Arendt’s way of thinking was multi-dimensional in that she followed several lines of thought simultaneously without clarifying their relationship to her reader. Margaret Canovan, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 109.

8. See Canovan, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt; Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (London: Sage, 1996); Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998).

9. Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (London: The East & West Library, 1957).

10. Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, 28.

11. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966).

12. Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1972). 232–33.

13. Margaret Canovan, “Is There an Arendtian Case for the Nation-State?” Contemporary Politics 5.2 (1999): 103, 114.

14. Arendt, Crises of the Republic, 233.

15. Margaret Canovan, “The People, the Masses, and the Mobilization of Power: The Paradox of Hannah Arendt’s “Populism,” Social Research 69.2 (2002): 413. Jeffrey C. Isaac, “Oases in the Desert: Hannah Arendt on Democratic Politics,” American Political Science Review 88.1 (1994): 156–68.

16. Isaac, “Oases in the Desert: Hannah Arendt on Democratic Politics,” 158.

17. Arendt, Crises of the Republic, 233.

18. Canovan, “Is There an Arendtian Case for the Nation-State?” 109.

19. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 142.

20. Gideon Baker, “Civil Society Theory and Republican Democracy,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 4.2 (2001): 59.

21. Albreht Wellmer, “Arendt on Revolution,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, ed. Dana R. Villa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 224.

22. Hauke Brunkhorst, “Equality and Elitism in Arendt,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, 190.

23. Canovan, “The People, the Masses, and the Mobilization of Power: The Paradox of Hannah Arendt’s ‘Populism’,” 403.

24. Baker, “Civil Society Theory and Republican Democracy,” 61.

25. Isaac, “Oases in the Desert: Hannah Arendt on Democratic Politics,” 156, 159–60.

26. Cohen and Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, 191.

27. Larry Diamond, “Toward Democratic Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy 5.3 (1994): 5. The World Bank provides the following definition of civil society, based on the work of a number of leading research centers: civil society is “the wide array of non-governmental and non-profit organizations that have a presence in public life, expressing the interests and values of their members or others, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious or philanthropic considerations.” Thus community groups and professional associations of all kinds (e.g., Amnesty International and the World Wildlife Fund) are civil society organizations that are compatible with the state in finding solutions to political, social, humanitarian and environmental problems.

28. Omar G. Encarnación, “Civil Society and the Consolidation of Democracy in Spain,” Political Science Quarterly 116.1 (2001): 56.

29. Petr Kopecký and Cas Mudde, “Rethinking Civil Society,” Democratization 10.3 (2003): 1–14.

30. Seyla Benhabib. “The Pariah and Her Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Biography of Rahel Varnhagen,” Political Theory 23.1 (1995): 20.

31. The idea of the active engagement of citizens in decision-making processes in civil associations is not alien to today’s democratic societies. Even though their effectiveness is controversial, national, international and supranational authorities understand the importance of continuous civic engagement and set the legal framework accordingly. Stijn Smismans has stated that by organizing Social Policy Forums, the European Commission has increased the level of interaction with non-governmental organizations in drafting and implementation of initiatives in fields such as gender, youth, racism and disability. Stijn Smismans, “European Civil Society: Shaped by Discourses and Institutional Interests,” European Law Journal 9.4 (2003): 484–85.

32. Metin Heper and Senem Yıldırım, “Revisiting Civil Society in Turkey,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 11.1 (2011): 1–18.

33. Michael W. Foley and Bob Edwards, “The Paradox of Civil Society,” Journal of Democracy 7.3 (1996): 38–52.

34. Foley and Edwards, “The Paradox of Civil Society,” 39.

35. Foley and Edwards, “The Paradox of Civil Society,” 39.

36. Arendt, The Human Condition, 7.

37. Arendt, The Crises of the Republic, 233.

38. Heper and Yıldırım, “Revisiting Civil Society in Turkey,” 4.

39. Arendt, The Crises of the Republic, 232.

40. Michael Walzer,“The Civil Society Argument,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London: Verso, 1992), 98; Edward Shils, “The Virtue of Civility,” in The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on Liberalism, Tradition, and Civil Society, ed. Steven Grosby (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1997): 346.

41. Hannah Arendt, “What is Freedom?” in Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1993), 164.

42. Hannah Arendt,“The Crisis in Education”, in Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1993), 186, 189.

43. For critiques, see Pitkin, The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social; Jürgen Habermas, “Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power,” Social Research 44 (1977): 3–24; Agnes Heller, “The Concept of the Political Revisited,” in Political Theory Today, ed. David Held (Oxford: Polity, 1991), 330–43.

44. James T. Knauer, “Motive and Goal in Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Political Action,” American Political Science Review 74.3 (1980): 725.

45. Arendt, On Revolution, 91; Arendt, The Human Condition, 29.

46. Arendt, The Human Condition, 32.

47. Honig, “Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity,” 136.