Tragedy, comedy and history in On Revolution

Abstract

This article explores the role of tragedy and comedy as hermeneutic perspectives present in some passages of Hannah Arendt's thought. The first claim is that, as a hermeneutic device applied to the understanding of history, tragedy can be a key to interpreting On Revolution. The Aristotelian concept of mimesis and the characteristics of tragic theatre set out in Poetics are important sources of this approach. Secondly, the article examines the sardonic tone that Arendt uses at the end of the first chapter of On Revolution, where she accuses the protagonists of the bloodiest phase of the Russian Revolution of being the ‘fools of history’. Some suggestions are made regarding the meaning of this comedic key, which reappears, not coincidentally, in another of the philosopher's most important historical analyses: Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Keywords:

• Arendt
• tragedy
• politics
• action
• comedy
• revolution

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of a degree thesis directed by Paula Hunziker, to whom I am indebted, not only for her invaluable supervision but also for her great teaching.

Notes

1. For an analysis of Arendt's recovery of Lucretius’ expression Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni and its relationship with a tragic view of history, see Tassin (2012).

2. Arendt develops a comic perspective using a family of words whose nuances and differences she never explicitly clarifies: laugh (Arendt says that she actually laughs about Eichmann's thoughtlessness: 1994, p. 16), funny (this adjective is used to describe some scenes of the trial: 1964, p. 27, p. 28, p. 135), irony (predominantly ironic is the tone of the book according to Arendt herself: 2000, p. 393; 1994, p. 16), buffoon (Eichmann would be one: 1994, p. 16), comedy (again, some situations that occurred during the trial are designated with this word: 1964, p. 17, pp. 27–28, p. 95; 2000, p. 151), ridiculous (so were some of Eichmann's boasts: 1964, p. 79), clown (the word is applied to the type of character Eichmann is: 1964, p. 30), fool (used with reference to Russian revolutionaries and Hitler: 1990, p. 58; 1964, p. 51), ludicrousness (as quoted below, the word characterizes the ‘spectacle of the Russian revolutionaries’: 1990, p. 58), laughter (as quoted below, that is Arendt's translation of the Lächerlichkeit of Brecht's writings: Errera, 1999, p. 28). These words do not form a conceptually precise vocabulary, which is linked to the fact that Arendt does not develop a systematic theory on the subject. We give the terms as they appear in their original contexts without attempting to draw distinctions that are absent in the perspective of the author. This section just intends to characterize the general spirit that inspires the narrative linked to these words, more precisely the manner in which this narrative in a comic key is a way of thinking events politically.

3. For a more detailed analysis of the comic features of Eichmann's inability to put himself in the place of another, see Horsman (2011).

4. For a more detailed analysis of Arendt's criticism of the anti-tragic narrative of the trial, see Hunziker (2014).