About the revolution

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Freedom leads the people
Eugène Delacroix , 1830

About the Revolution (original title: On Revolution ) is a work first published in 1963 by the political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906–1975).

The author analyzes, interprets, and compares the French and American revolutions , including other revolutions . Its main concern is to determine "the essential characters of the revolutionary spirit" (p. 225). She recognizes this revolutionary spirit in the possibility of starting something new and in the joint action of people. "In the language of the 18th century [the principles of the revolutionary spirit] are called public freedom, public happiness, public spirit." (Pp. 284 and 286) In this work Arendt continues to criticize the societies that emerged from the revolutions because the ideals or the goal of the revolution were forgotten and today's nations did not meet the democratic demands of the revolutionaries.

General

Emergence

Like her main philosophical work Vita activa or Vom aktivigen Leben (English original version 1958), the book arose from the lecture series "The United States and the Revolutionary Spirit" , which Arendt wanted to hold in the spring of 1959 at Princeton University . It was first published in English under the title On Revolution (1963). Two years later it was published in a German translation that Arendt himself had done, partly in Munich and Zurich. The elaboration of the book overlapped with the Eichmann trial and the elaboration of the Eichmann book in Jerusalem . Arendt also planned a “policy booklet”. The elaboration flowed partly into the revolution book. The “ Politics Booklet” was never finished, but Ursula Ludz has text fragments in the book What is Politics? published posthumously.

Marie Luise Knott points out that the English version of On Revolution differs significantly from the German version. Wolfgang Heuer writes that the German edition in “style and content” was written much more freely than with a mere translation by Arendt “and that the text is 25 percent longer than the usual 5 percent”.

First reactions

She dedicates her work to Gertrud and Karl Jaspers , "in admiration - in friendship - in love" . Jaspers rated On Revolution in a letter "as a book that is political in depth mind and mastery of executions besides, perhaps your book on the total domination." Arendt's second husband, Heinrich Blucher , whose influence on the book is not high enough It is to be assessed that he himself had joined the soldiers' councils in the November Revolution 1918, assesses the book in a letter as follows: “ I will read ... your revolutionary book again. It has gotten even better, so to speak, and really, as [Alfred] Kazin says, your best book. Clear, well-balanced and politically strong. If it does work, it will be long lasting. Your previous two ways of treating history [in the book of totalitarianism and Vita Activa ] are strongly united here. "

Concept of revolution

In the introduction Arendt points out what "has determined the real essence of politics [in the West] ... - the cause of freedom against the calamities of dictatorship of any kind" . (P. 9) The goal of a revolution can be “ nothing other than freedom .” (P. 10) As a possibility to give this freedom political expression, Arendt sees a federal council system rather than the well-known forms of representative parliamentary democracies.

For Arendt, revolutions are an invention of the modern age . Wars , on the other hand, are as old as humanity. Arendt proposes that wars will gradually disappear from the political scene, while revolutions will continue to influence political events. According to Arendt, violence is the common denominator of war and revolution, but "Violence can never do more than protect the borders of the political sphere." (P. 20)

The initial problem of how to interrupt the seemingly eternal cycle of human history appears again and again in Arendt's works. A revolution represents a beginning , a new beginning. Arendt's thoughts revolve around this new beginning. How is it possible? Why is it happening? Why had no one known about it before? How is it to be made non-violent?

Definitions and history

In the first chapter ("The Historical Background"), Arendt emphasizes the great influence of US society on the peoples of Europe before the American Revolution. Here there was already an "amazing wealth" ( Robert Redslob ). This fact alone broke the eternal cycle of human history. Before it was considered natural that there would be rich and poor. In America, according to Arendt, there was no poverty as there was in Europe, and word of this got around in Europe. On the other hand, the actual American Revolution had no consequences for the other European revolutions. Another important reason why the revolutions broke out in modern times is because of secularization .

According to Arendt, one can speak of a “revolution” if the actors are concerned with freedom and a new beginning is made. Arendt does not understand freedom from need, misery or fear. This liberation is more of a negative kind, possible in almost every form of government and a good prerequisite for a revolution. In positive terms, freedom means the possibility of acting freely. And this was the experience of the “men of the revolution” - a phrase that Arendt often uses. It is the “revolutionary spirit” that appeared here for the first time in our era, “namely the desire to liberate and to found a new place for freedom itself” . (P. 42)

Before the modern age, the current term “ revolution ” did not exist. But there were words for uprisings and rebellions. According to Arendt, the term revolution was first used by Copernicus in astronomy, but not yet in the current sense, but rather "referred to a regular and circular" revolving "movement of the heavenly bodies" . (P. 50) The word was first used in a political sense in 1660, when Oliver Cromwell's son was expelled and Charles II restored conditions before the actual Cromwell revolution - the establishment of a republic . According to Arendt, this represented a restoration - just like the Glorious Revolution .

She goes on to say that the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries were "originally intended and planned as restorations" (p. 52). The rule of absolutism should be reversed and the previous conditions restored. The men who started the revolution actually wanted a restoration. It was only when the same men acted that a new beginning emerged - a revolution that no one had foreseen.

The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789

Since July 14, 1789, the storm on the Bastille , there has been something irresistible to the word “revolution” . Once the old regime has collapsed and “power is in the streets” (p. 59), revolutions can no longer be stopped. What is interesting for Arendt is that this idea takes on significance for the further history of mankind, while the more successful American Revolution had no consequences for historical consciousness.

The following generations did not learn anything from the American Revolution, but the French Revolution served as a template for the following revolutions. What Pierre Vergniaud said was repeated over and over again : " The revolution is eating its own children like Saturn " (p. 60) To the viewers of the French Revolution outside France, it looked as if the revolutionaries were not heading in the direction of the revolution and the revolution no longer had anything in common with the original goal. Action by the revolutionaries was apparently no longer possible. In the coming USA, however, the revolutionaries were convinced that they would control the revolutionary process themselves.

In this context, Arendt criticizes Hegel . For Arendt, "the most serious consequence of the French Revolution is the birth of the modern concept of history in Hegelian philosophy." (P. 63) It was no longer politics , action in freedom, but historical necessity or the power of history that human beings who propelled humanity forward. From the French Revolution as a revolution and counter-revolution , according to Arendt's interpretation, Hegel concluded that history was dialectical. This had for Hegel, "then the famous dialectic of freedom and necessity arise in which these two opposing concepts eventually coincide and are one and the same say. - what has become perhaps the most formidable and humanly speaking unbearable paradox of the entire modern thought" (S. 66)

The revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries imitated the drama of the French Revolution. For example, the October Revolution in Russia. The professional revolutionaries studied Karl Marx , according to Arendt “the greatest student Hegel ever had” (p. 9) and “the greatest theoretician of the revolutions in general” (p. 76), and thus adopted the fateful Hegelian dialectic .

Realm of freedom or realm of necessity

The second chapter of the book is entitled "The Social Question" . The men of the revolution actually wanted a restoration, then freedom became the goal of the revolution. The goal of freedom was set by King Louis XVI. and threatened the European powers, so that the sans-culottes came to the aid of the revolutionaries. With the sans-culottes, the poverty and misery of the masses appeared on the scene of politics. In this way, freedom was sacrificed to necessity, because Maximilien de Robespierre wanted to help the sans-culottes. "The transformation of human rights into the rights of the sans-culottes is the turning point of the French and all subsequent revolutions." (P. 75)

According to Arendt, “nothing was more effective and also more original than that he [Marx] interpreted the urgent need of mass poverty politically ... and [he learned] that poverty can be a political factor of the very first order." (P. 77) From this Marx derived the term the exploitation that must be combated. In doing so, Marx raised the fight against mass poverty and thus the production of goods to the highest revolutionary goal and no longer freedom - the liberation of people from dictatorship.

The solution to the problem appears in Lenin's famous formulation, in which he describes the goal of the October Revolution: "electrification and soviets" . Arendt recognizes the liberation from poverty and misery in » electrification «. According to Arendt, Lenin means that poverty and misery can be solved technically. In the " Soviets " Arendt sees the solution for freedom - the council system . Nevertheless, Lenin did not implement this, but gave all power not to the councils but to the party .

According to Arendt, the ideas of the French Revolution were crushed by the masses. In America there was poverty, but there was no need and misery like in Europe. Thomas Jefferson coined the term “lovely equality” that prevails in America. However, Arendt points to "the terrible degrading misery of the black slaves" (p. 89), which, however, was not noticed by the public . For Arendt, the “passion of compassion” is “perhaps the most dangerous of all revolutionary passions” (p. 91), which attacked the European revolutionaries. In the American Revolution, that passion did not play a role.

According to Arendt, was compassion of the revolutionaries on the misery of the French people from Robespierre to virtue explains simply. The people and not the revolution now came first. The will of the people became the decisive power. Robespierre benefited from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of the “general will” ( volonté générale ) . According to Rousseau, the “general will” of a people is formed when “the existence of an external enemy” (p. 98) is tacitly assumed. This is the people or the nation. Rousseau went even further and assumed that “the enemy common to all exists in the innermost core of every citizen” (p. 98). This creates a duel within each person. According to Robespierre, the most virtuous person is the one who acts against his own interests. Thus "the terror theories from Robespierre to Lenin and Stalin [...] all take for granted that the general interest is automatically and constantly at enmity with the self-interest of every individual citizen." (P. 100)

Passionate pity prevents sensible action because people then no longer think, but only act virtuously. This "absolutely good in human coexistence [turns out] to be hardly less dangerous than absolutely evil" . (P. 104) In this context, Arendt refers to the stories The Grand Inquisitor in the novel The Brothers Karamasov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Billy Budd by Herman Melville . Melville writes in the foreword to Billy Budd: "How was it possible that immediately after" ending ancient injustices in the Old World "... the [French] Revolution committed greater injustice and worse oppression than the kings?" (P. 111) His novel is the reverse of the Old Testament story in which Cain slew Abel. Arendt emphasizes that the absolutely good is speechless and cannot defend itself with arguments of reason. That is why the absolute good turns into violence, that is why Billy Budd kills his tormentor.

She contrasts passionate compassion with solidarity . Solidarity is based on reason and can guide human action. Rousseau seems heartless to reason, but "wherever virtue has been derived from compassion, cruelties have arisen." (P. 114) Once feelings and emotions are generated in a crowd through passionate pity, the crowd will do anything - everything is allowed then.

Another aspect is that whoever wants to appear virtuous in public, brings his feelings and thoughts into public. According to Arendt, this is fatal, since these do not belong in the public eye. Rather, “the properties of the heart require… protection against the light of the public” (p. 122). Once they are public, they are immediately viewed with suspicion, both by others and by oneself. This leads to that everywhere Treason and hypocrisy are suspected. All are somehow suspicious. This increased the terror against everyone in Robespierre's reign of terror .

The public, or rather dominant public opinion , can lead to some form of tyranny . An opinion can be formed in the individual, but there is no general opinion of a people. This was the view of the American revolutionaries. What is necessary, however, is an exchange of views between people within a people. So the problem is how to properly institutionalize this exchange of views.

"The men who let go of the reign of terror in the 18th century were still of good faith, and the excess of terror was not a principle for them." (P. 127) The Russian Revolution, like all other revolutions that followed, repeated the drama of the French Revolution, but terror was used permanently and deliberately in the ruling apparatus in Russia. Through the connection of terror and ideology against the background of the conviction of historical necessity, "party purges" occurred again and again. There were enemies everywhere, apparently, and those who were indomitable became "subjectively" innocent, "objective enemy". "Without this term, according to Arendt, neither the purges nor the show trials of the Stalin regime can be understood.

In this context, Arendt, after addressing the relationship between being and appearance , goes into the difference between hypocrite and liar . According to Socrates there was no difference between being and appearance, while Niccolò Machiavelli suspected a transcendent being behind every appearance. Socrates taught: “Be how you want to appear to others.” Machiavelli, on the other hand, postulated: “Appear how you want to be.” According to Machiavelli, it is therefore irrelevant for other people, the world and their politics how someone really is. Robespierre, however, was “on the modern hunt for truth” which ended “in the horror of virtue”. However, he did not go so far as to “hand out the mask of the traitor to people in order to be sure that all roles are occupied in the bloody masquerade of the“ dialectical movements ”.” He did not yet believe in “fabricating” the truth " by rewriting the history books from time to time ." According to Arendt, Socrates and Machiavelli were not concerned with lies but with the "crime hidden from all the world" (p. 128f).

A Socratic liar or perpetrator can hide his deeds from the public, but not from himself, if he enters into a dialogue with himself, as Arendt puts it in the dialogue of thought . The perpetrator is therefore his own witness, “to whom he must answer questions.” (P. 130) This “ tribunal ” was later called conscience . It was forgotten that this conscience does not work “when people refuse to think or refuse to talk to themselves and to socialize” (p. 131)

Since Machiavelli was influenced by the Christian faith, his solution is that the perpetrator can hide his deeds from the public, but that he ultimately has to come before God. His deeds count only before God. Interestingly enough, according to Arendt, Machiavelli comes to the conclusion "that the world becomes better when vice does not appear." (P. 133) But the individual person does not become better as a result.

The difference between liar and hypocrite is that the hypocrite does not think, but is so deceitful in himself that he is not aware of his lies. When the hypocrite goes into politics, he can play any role and so cheat without feeling guilty, which makes him so dangerous. For Robespierre the absolute monarchs and the court nobility were the hypocrites. They have been corrupted by society . The common people were unspoiled and good.

In the last section of Chapter 2, Arendt goes back to the social question. The French Revolution was crushed by the misery of the masses. It seems as if the masses were in a primordial state or a natural state when they achieved freedom. But since the National Assembly appeared just as hypocritical to the masses as Louis XVI did to them. had happened, they no longer trusted this institution.

In addition, virtue swoons and turns into incredible violence when the social situation is unbearable. Arendt draws from this on the one hand the conclusion that "every attempt to solve the social question by political means ends in terror and that nothing destroys a revolution with greater certainty than the rule of terror, on the other hand it must be admitted that it is very difficult to avoid this fateful mistake if the revolution breaks out in a country that is under the curse of poverty. ” (p. 143) The social question must therefore be solved beforehand with the help of technology or natural sciences, before a republic is established with political freedoms can be. During the American Revolution, the social question played no role - among other things, because the slaves were invisible, were in the realm of darkness.

The passion to excel

At the beginning of the third chapter - "The" pursuit of happiness "" , Arendt says that no revolution "was spontaneously initiated by the masses of the poor themselves" . Revolutions are impossible in states in which the authority of the state still functions relatively well. They are "only possible at all where the power lies in the streets" . Revolutions are the result of the state's loss of authority, "they are never its cause." (P. 148)

In addition to the collapse of the existing state system, the prerequisites for a successful revolution are some (> ten) people who are prepared to seize the power that lies in the streets.

Revolutions always break out surprisingly for the prepared revolutionaries because the point in time is unknown. What is known, however, is the impending demise of the state system. For example, 40 years before the revolution, Charles-Louis de Montesquieu anticipated "the coming" downfall of the West "" . (P. 149) David Hume and Edmund Burke also foresaw the fall of the monarchy for England, "only chance" (ibid.) Prevented this. What they noticed was the "collapse of the ancient Roman trinity of religion, authority and tradition" . (P. 150)

Signing of the Mayflower Treaty

The preparation of the revolutionaries in America and France consisted in studying antiquity and, above all, the Roman Republic . John Adams , the second president of the United States, "collected constitutions like other people collected postage stamps." (P. 155) But the revolutionaries did not actually believe in a revolution, they "were passionate about public freedom" (p. 151)

The key difference between the French and American revolutions is that the French had no experience in the field of freedom, while the Americans were practically self-administered. John Adams, for example, claims that "the revolution took place before the War of Independence began". (ibid.) The reason is the ' townhalls ', in which the people administered themselves in the cities and towns and thus also gave themselves rules. The most famous set of rules is the Mayflower Treaty .

In the townhalls , Americans learned to use their freedom. It was not a burden, duty or burden for them to take on a public office there, but a joy. Adams notes that "the passion to excel ... is more essential and remarkable" " than any other human drives and skills ." (P. 152) Adams note in English: " a desire to be seen, heard, talked of, approved and respected by the people about him, and within his knowledge. «(Ibid.)

In France the king ruled absolutely . The Ballhaus Oath was his first attempt to appear in public. But there were only representatives of the third estates who did not represent the people. The anchoring of the “hommes de lettres” , the educated class in France, did not exist in the French people, in contrast to America. In France, too, there was a lack of institutions such as the 'townhalls'. So there was no way in France to discuss a constitution with the entire people or their representatives.

In America the establishment of a new political community on the basis of a constitution has succeeded, but it has not succeeded in “ keeping the spirit and principles of the founding act in permanent institutions” (p. 162), above all the pursuit of public happiness - » pursuit of happiness "(Jefferson) - disappeared. What is meant is the experience of the revolutionary spirit to act in freedom and to excel in public - "the passion to excel" (Adams). Private interests took this place. The luck was no longer sought in '' public happiness' "(page 163), but in the private interests " in the right to ruthless pursuit of self-interest. " (P 174)

Arendt does not deny the Americans their achievement of having reduced poverty and misery, but "it is quite possible that the republic perishes because of the wealth and consumerism of its society" . (P. 178)

By juxtaposing “private people” and “citizens” and warning against the predominance of the pursuit of private interests, she criticizes the denunciation and exposure of the public as a sphere of vanity, ambition and will to power, the anger of the “common man” against the “ “Great gentlemen” “in the name of democracy. She states the flight “into the new“ inwardness of consciousness ”as the only“ appropriate domain of human freedom ”.” (P. 181) “This is how a struggle arose in society itself, in which individuals struggled for their individuality. And they lost this struggle, society became more and more conformist and "dealt with the individualization of the individual" just as the ' bourgeois ' dealt with the ' citoyen ' " (p. 182)

A start

In the fourth chapter - "The Foundation: Constitutio Liberatis" - Arendt discusses the founding of the United States. The founding act itself is particularly important for Arendt. A constitution that is drawn up by constitutional experts and then presented to the people does not constitute a stable state. Such constitutions, one example being the Weimar constitution , are viewed with suspicion by the population. They have no authority and are not rooted in the people.

John Adams

The American people liberated themselves from England in the War of Independence, and in parallel they established a republic. Without this re-establishment, it would have been just a rebellion and not a revolution. A rebellion without a new foundation would end in chaos. John Adams points out that "without a constitution, neither morality nor wealth, nor the discipline of the army, nor can they all achieve anything in the least." (P. 185)

The American revolutionaries leaned on Montesquieu's doctrine of the separation of powers , which can be traced back to Aristotle or Polybius . The founding fathers wanted to establish power because the loose confederation of states of the Confederation had proven to be unsuitable.

John Adams, who was “most deeply influenced by Montesquieu” (p. 149), raises the question “how one can balance power against power” (ibid.). How can the power of the then 13 individual states not become the powerlessness of the entire system or, conversely, the powerlessness of a single state? How can the legislature, executive and judiciary not only control each other, but also generate even more power overall? The solution is that “power sharing makes a community more powerful than centralizing it” . (P. 198)

Arendt also points out that the system of " checks and balances " was introduced on James Madison's arguments . This new system ", unlike the Bill of Rights , was not predetermined by any tradition, but emerged exclusively from the spirit of the revolution." (P. 201) Here the goal of the revolution, the "founding of freedom", is completed .

According to Arendt, the men of the French Revolution were looking for an origin for the source of all power. In absolutism the king was of divine origin. Lawgiver and power were united in his person. The French revolutionaries put the French people in the place of the king; they were "the source of all legitimate power" and "the will of the people was the origin of the law" (p. 204). The American revolutionaries faced the same problem, but no one “came up with the idea of ​​deriving law and power from the same source. The place of power was moved to the people, but the source of all laws should be the constitution. " (Ibid.)

Through the founding act, the American constitution became for the people "an objective part of the world, which was withdrawn from the subjective will of its inhabitants." (P. 204) The French constitutions were frequently changed by the will of the people and thus gave no stability. “A structure that is built on the basis of the national will [is] built on sand.” (P. 212) The fact that a dictatorship can easily emerge from such a nation-state has been confirmed time and again, especially in times of crisis.

In the last section of Chapter 4, Arendt emphasizes the favorable circumstances of the American Revolution. Even before the revolution, emigrants had over 150 years to practice self-government. Alexis de Tocqueville emphasizes that " the American Revolution with its doctrine of popular sovereignty [broke out] in the townships ... and from there [took] possession of the state ." (P. 215) The people were "not an absolute ... but a present reality." (Ibid.)

The big example that got around afterwards was the Mayflower Pact. Here the Pilgrim Fathers signed a contract on board the ship, which was based on mutual promise and trust . According to Arendt, these experiences were more essential than any theories of Montesquieu, Rousseau and others, because "reason can lead astray" (John Dickinson, p. 219). John Locke also ties in with this in his contract theories ( social contract ) without directly referring to it, as Arendt claims.

The signing of the American Declaration of Independence. Painting by John Trumbull (around 1816)

In this context, Arendt distinguishes between two contracts. On the one hand, the contract between people, which is based on the act of contract and the promise on which it is based. On the other hand, there is the “social contract between an already existing society and a ruler outside of it” . (P. 221) In the first case the individual loses power, but regains it through the act of promising. It also reduces the isolation of individuals from one another. In the second case, the consent of the citizens creates a constitutional state that protects the isolation of individuals and has less power overall.

For Arendt, this practical experience of the American settlers is "the elementary grammar of all political action ... according to the rules of which human power develops or perishes." (P. 224)

In the French Revolution, unlike in the American Revolution, the National Assembly had no real mandate from the people. The French revolutionaries assumed "good people" " (p. 225), while the American revolutionaries were more pessimistic. They made the experience “that the mutual bond of promises, contracts and alliances is strong enough to keep the natural evil in the individual under control.” “Man is bad, that was actually their opinion, and only if he is unites with his own kind, he can still become something decent. " (p. 226)

Paradox of the beginning

The fifth chapter has the title “Novus Ordo Saeclorum” , in Arendt's translation: “Absolute new beginning” or “New foundation”. First, it defines authority , power and violence . “Authority” is based on the obedience of a person to a commanding person who obtains his authority through superior knowledge or the like. “Power” is based on the fact that “the members of a power association have agreed on something and are now acting unanimously” . (P. 232) So power rests on a contract that is based on mutual promise and trust. “Violence” causes someone to obey another because of these violent means - e.g. B. a pistol - has. According to Arendt, these differences are often blurred.

The French revolutionaries did not distinguish between power and violence. The absolute king and his bureaucracy had power over the population in France, nobody had power, since there were only feudal bodies; “This power should now be transferred to the people through the revolution” (p. 233) In the language of the revolutionaries, all power should rest with the people. The violence of the revolution swept away all the institutions of the ancien régime. But, according to Arendt, no power arises from sheer force. (P. 235)

The American revolutionaries, on the other hand, made a distinction "between the origin of power, which lay" below "in the people, and the source of law, as it were from" above ", in whatever transcendent region" . (P. 237)

In both revolutions there appears the need for an absolute that legitimizes the laws made by man. The question of how to make a beginning can make, "whose authority can not be questioned" (p 237f), the men were employed both revolutions. The French revolutionaries first deified the people by viewing the law as an expression of the general will. They made the revolution itself the source of all law, which incessantly issued new ordinances, which were soon swept away. The Americans, on the other hand, were looking for an " immortal legislature ." (ibid.) The revolutionaries, although they described themselves as enlightened people, repeatedly came to solutions based on religion ( deists ). The only exception among political theorists, according to Arendt, was Montesquieu.

According to Arendt, this problem can be better understood from a more recent (1963) perspective, because it represents a historical and not a factual one. The Roman Republic in particular did not know the absolute claim. For the Romans, the laws were not of divine origin, but regulated the relationships between the Roman citizens and relations with their new allies. After the Roman Empire collapsed, the church also took over the political arena. Thus “the worldly laws were perceived only as the mere worldly expression of divinely revealed commandments” (p. 244). These commandments were in the nature of orders and required blind obedience. Jefferson appeals, in spite of all enlightenment , to "the God of nature" (p. 245) - natural law can only be binding "if it is itself again divinely sanctioned" (ibid.)

Arendt concludes that “such an absolutization reintroduced a kind of despotic violence into the political arena” (p. 248). Jefferson was aware of the paradox when he stated that the American revolutionaries had "agreed" on something absolute out of political insight , which was absurd. (P. 248)

Arendt also emphasizes the founding act of the American Revolution. The first settlers made a revolutionary new beginning. Although they adopted the imperative and prohibitive character of laws from European tradition, they also introduced terms such as “ happiness ” and “freedom of action” into politics. The religious sanctions in the political sphere did not withstand the onslaught of modernity , the state structures of the revolutions "crumbled" in Europe, but not in America. The "truths" of the American Revolution are now based solely on the "founding act". (P. 252f)

It highlights the influence of the Roman Republic on the American Revolution and describes clear parallels: For the Romans, the foundation of the Eternal City ( Rome ) (753 BC) was the new beginning. Authority, tradition and religion all sprang from the same source, "the foundation of the city, that was and remained the backing of Roman history from beginning to end." (P. 259) In theory, the American revolutionaries attempted the problem of the beginning with the reference described above to solve an absolute. In practice, however, the Roman model was decisive.

John Quincy Adams describes how the American Constitution can be  " forced under the pressure of the bitterest necessity of a most reluctant nation " (p. 255). But after this happened, this constitution was worshiped almost religiously. “The worship of the Constitution in America (has) nothing to do with what we usually understand by religion . Behind it there is no Christian belief in revealed God and no Jewish obedience owed to the Creator and Judge of the world. ” (P. 255) It owes the stability of the American republic “ to the authority which the founding act and the one-new -Bear the beginning of the sentence. " (P. 256)

The revolutionaries transferred authority in the American state apparatus "from the (Roman) Senate to the Supreme Court" (p. 257). This is the most significant change for Arendt. The Supreme Court only has “ judgment ”, but in the American system of checks and balances it is the decisive institution.

After Arendt, the Romans preferred Aeneas (who carried his father Anchises from burning Troy) as their ancestor and not Romulus (who slew his brother Remus). Virgil's story of Aeneas is therefore a reversal of the Homeric order of war and victory and thus a radical "revaluation of Greek Homeric virtues." (P. 269) At the end of a war, the Greeks knew nothing other than "victory for one and death or." the shame of bondage for others. ” (ibid.) Unlike the Romans, who made allies of the conquered by laws. The initial problem does not arise for the Romans, since the founding of Rome was not seen as an absolute new beginning, but as the rebirth of Troy .

The author expressly opposes the “classic legends of origin ”, according to which violence and crime are at the beginning of human history. The founding of Rome and the American Revolution are for them examples of a new beginning without violence. Because “ this revolution [d. i. the American] has been kindled consciously and in joint consultation and brought to a good end on the basis of mutual commitments and promises. "(P. 275) The basis was laid by " the united power of the many. " (Ibid.)

Arendt's political philosophy is based on the idea of ​​"native nature" ( natality ). For them, every person is a new hope because it represents a new beginning. She sees the solution to the logically insoluble task of making a new beginning in the person himself, who "is existentially predetermined, as it were, insofar as he himself represents a beginning". (P. 272) For Arendt, the American Revolution is an example of "that man can indeed do this - make a start, novus ordo saeclorum." (P. 276)

Loss of importance of the political space

In the sixth chapter, entitled “Tradition and Spirit of the Revolution” , Arendt sets out the theses that, on the one hand, there is hardly any interest in the American revolution in Europe, which is mostly not included in the history of the great revolutions and, on the other hand, in the USA Spirit of revolution had disappeared. She then turns to the consequences of "ignorance" and "failure" of the American Revolution and tries to determine "the historical causes" for them. (P. 282)

In contrast to the French Revolution, a “ fatal amnesia ” prevails with regard to the American Revolution . In America itself there was no “sure memory” of the revolution. The rejection of conceptual thinking in America had led "the entire interpretation of American history since Tocqueville to have come under the influence of concepts and theories whose sources of experience stem from other historical contexts." (P. 283)

The failure of the French Revolution has been extensively analyzed, but the American Revolution was forgotten and the survival of the American Republic aroused little sympathy. Thus "the tradition of the French Revolution ... is the only revolutionary tradition that exists at all." (P. 284) A consequence of this forgetting is that one's own revolutionary tradition does not play a role in US foreign policy.

"Since the Second World War , the foreign policy of the United States has not allowed itself to be influenced more effectively by any motive than by this fear of revolution, the only result of which is the multiple and desperate attempts to stabilize the status quo everywhere, which basically could hardly ever mean anything else. than to throw the power and prestige of America in favor of aging and corrupt governments, objects of hatred and contempt for their own citizens. ” (p. 279)

Another consequence is the United States' lack of judgment in dealing with the revolutionary governments of Russia , China and Cuba . Freedom is not based on a particular economic system. The real political freedoms are freedom of thought and speech, freedom of assembly and organization. The " ideological" conflicts between East and West do not result from the difference between two economic systems, but only from the opposition between freedom and dictatorship, between the "institutions of freedom " which are owed to the triumph of a revolution and the various forms of rule that result the defeat of revolutions. (P. 281)

Arendt sees the historical causes for the loss of the revolutionary spirit in the efforts of the revolutionaries not only to found something new, but also to secure stability and durability for this new thing. According to Arendt, these two goals contradict each other. Actually, the founding act should be repeated by every generation, but this would endanger stability.

By studying democracy in ancient Greece, the American revolutionaries had come to the conclusion that democracy was absolutely unstable. Criticisms were in particular "the fickleness of the citizens, the lack of sense of public affairs [and] the tendency to be torn from moods and emotions" . (P. 289)

To control these dangers, they created the Senate to institutionalize the representation of public opinion and the institution of the House of Representatives to represent the various interests. But the revolutionaries, by creating these two new institutions and institutionalizing the Supreme Court, failed to maintain the spirit of the revolution.

What was left of the revolution was the safeguarding of basic rights , the concern for the private well-being of the largest number, the knowledge of the power of public opinion and the ability to form “pressure groups” . According to Arendt, these are social values, but not political principles such as "public freedom, public happiness and public spirit." (P. 284)

Council system as an alternative

The only one among the American revolutionaries who at least suspected "the decisive flaw of the new republic" (p. 302) was Jefferson. He saw the problem that only the first generation could act freely and make a fresh start. He was looking for solutions how each generation can reconstitute itself in a state.

Jefferson's criticism was that the American republic "gave freedom to the people, but it contained no space in which that freedom could actually be exercised." (P. 302)

According to Jefferson, the representative system did not manage to abolish the old principle of rulers and ruled. The public space here only belongs to the elected MPs . The people lost all possibility of political participation in public affairs. The people either fall into lethargy or resist state power.

One solution suggested by Jefferson was that each generation “has the right to choose the form of government for itself. «(P. 301) This would mean that a new beginning would have to be made approximately every 19 years. Arendt emphasizes that this is "too fantastic" (ibid.), Because firstly, non-republican governments could emerge and secondly, the new beginning would become routine.

The course of the French Revolution, she argues, was exactly the opposite. During the Revolution, developed "the first timid signs of a new political organization and a hitherto unknown form of government." (P 353) The "first Paris Commune" with its 48 sections is for Arendt the first approach of a Soviet Republic . Within the Sections were about education and information about new laws and everything that has to do with freedom, equality, etc. In principle, their main task was to exchange views and to form an opinion based on this. After Arendt, their party-political neutrality was the doom of the sections. The power of the Sections became too great for the Jacobins .

At that time, the sections still consisted of two elements, the “street that rots together” and “the new public spirit that organizes itself” . (P. 313) The conflict was between the "communes" and the revolutionary government. The sans-culottes exerted tremendous pressure, which arose from the need and misery of their existence. According to Arendt, the revolution perished because of the misery it had itself brought to the streets. The revolutionaries' “passion for freedom” sank “in a stream of compassion”. Robespierre's reign of terror destroyed the sections, among other things because they wanted to organize themselves federally , but Robespierre wanted to establish a central nation- state based on the general will. These first organs of republican people's organization were therefore not destroyed by the counter-revolution, but by the revolutionary government. The result was the formation of a network of party cells whose task was not to discuss, but to spy on one another. "All of these things are only too familiar to us through the Russian Revolution , in the course of which the Bolshevik Party, using exactly the same methods, undermined and perverted the revolutionary Soviet system." (P. 316)

According to Arendt, in addition to the idea of ​​councils, the party system arose at the same time , "It is the glorious as well as the ominous moment of the birth of the nation state and the fall of the free republic." (P. 317) With the fall of the free republic, the population lost its power the parliamentary representatives. In the essence of the multi-party system , Arendt sees the system for the “ one-party dictatorship ” (ibid.), Historically embodied for the first time in Robespierre's reign of terror.

In the third section of the last chapter, Arendt presents the political alternative to the American Revolution. She refers here almost exclusively to Jefferson, who after his active political days reflected on the revolution and his presidency. The source for Arendt are Jefferson's letters. Jefferson's main interest was the stability of the republic, which he saw threatened by the non-participation of citizens in public affairs.

Those who only go to the ballot box every two or four years are mainly interested in their private interests. Among other things, this will bring corruption into public politics. Arendt warns that “corruption and abuse of power through private interests” are much more likely than “through the abuse of power by public authorities.” (P. 323) This can only be prevented by publicity, in which the corrupt “fear of shame “(Ibid.) Fear.

Rembrandt Peale: Thomas Jefferson (1805).

Jefferson's solution was the " ward system " (" divide the counties into wards " (p. 319)), in Arendt's own translation "district system" or "elementary republics". Elsewhere, Jefferson speaks of districts that have 100 citizens. He also uses the term "councils" (p. 325) in his letter of February 2, 1816 to Cabel. Jefferson outlines how these councils can be integrated into the American state apparatus:

" The elementary republics of the councils, the county republics, countries Republics and the Republic of the Union should be divided in a stepped series of powers, each of which is anchored in the law, which has its devolving powers and all together in a system of truly balanced inhibitions and controls for the government are integrated. «(P. 325f)

Although Jefferson does not describe the special functions of the elementary republics in more detail, Arendt continues, he recognizes that through the subdivision of councils he proposed, the vote of the people can be identified better than through the mechanical electoral system. The author adds that Jefferson's proposal to strengthen the elementary republics or councils vis-à-vis the central government went far beyond a simple reform of the existing form of government.

According to Arendt, the ultimate goal of a revolution, like Jefferson's considerations, is the political freedom of the citizens

“No one can be called happy who does not take part in public affairs, that no one is free who does not know from experience what public freedom is, and that no one is free or happy who has no power, namely no share in public power. " (P. 326f)

In the USA, before the revolution, the «townships» formed the elementary republics, which, however, do not appear in the constitution anywhere. In almost all revolutions in Europe, council systems developed spontaneously, which were immediately destroyed by the parties, whether left, right or revolutionary. In several places Arendt emphasizes the non-partisan and above all peaceful character of the councils, which, in Jefferson's view, constituted "the only possible non-violent alternative to his earlier ideas ... a revolutionary succession corresponding to the change of generation." (P. 321)

It describes Marx and Lenin as "the two greatest revolutionaries" (p. 328), who, according to their own statement, did not foresee either the revolution of the "second" Paris Commune or the Russian Revolution ("November Revolution "). The council system as an alternative to bureaucratic and violent revolutionary (one) party systems appeared spontaneously, without direct role models.

According to Arendt, "a widespread contempt for the state apparatus is one of the most powerful forces that cause a revolution" . (P. 334) The “professional revolutionaries” were important to the modern revolutions, but they did not prepare any armed or unarmed uprisings. “The outbreak of a revolution frees the local professional revolutionaries from their respective places of residence, from the prisons and the libraries and the coffee houses. Even Lenin's party of professional revolutionaries could not have "made" a revolution; They too could only be ready to be on the spot at the moment of collapse. ” (p. 333f) Accordingly, the professional revolutionaries only know when power is on the streets. Their greatest advantage is that "their names are known and not compromised." (P. 334)

During a revolution, councils are formed spontaneously every time - with the exception of the February revolution of 1848 and the March revolution of 1848, which represented a new form of government. According to Arendt , the professional revolutionaries are “particularly unsuitable for seeing and understanding what is really new in a revolution” (p. 335). The councils contradicted what they had learned and were thus counter-revolutionary. They were described as reactionary or, as by Max Adler, as "a romantic dream chasing the" class past "" . (P. 339)

Every citizen could act freely in the councils. This posed a deadly danger for the revolutionary parties or the party system. Arendt quotes Rosa Luxemburg to make it clear what the consequences of a one-party dictatorship are:

“ With the crushing of political life in the whole country, life in the Soviets must also become more and more slack. Without general elections, unrestrained freedom of the press and assembly, and free struggle of opinion, life in every public institution dies, and the sham life in the bureaucracy alone becomes the active element. Public life is gradually falling asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless idealism direct and rule, among them in fact a dozen brilliant minds are in charge, and an elite of the working class is called in from time to time to applaud the speeches of the leaders to unanimously approve the proposed resolutions, basically a clique economy - not the dictatorship of the proletariat , but the dictatorship of a handful of politicians. «(P. 340)

The councils were formed spontaneously during the Russian February Revolution in 1917 and the Hungarian Revolution (1956) , for example . Any political theories were irrelevant. Here Arendt recognizes the spirit of the revolution, which has always been combined with federal principles. The amazing thing is that the councils ( soviets , soldiers 'councils, peasants' councils, neighborhood councils, revolutionary councils, Writers and Artists councils, student councils, youth councils, officials councils, etc.) organized themselves and got in touch with each other in the two revolutions in the shortest possible time "to Finally, through the training of regional and provincial councils, to set up a system very quickly from which the deputies could be elected to a national assembly that represented the whole country. ” (p. 344) Nevertheless, the parties managed to subvert this system and destroy.

Also at the party democracy exerts Arendt criticism. Although the British and American two-party systems effectively control the rulers through the almost institutionalized opposition, this is not enough. She accuses the parties in the European multi-party system of forming an oligarchic bureaucracy that lacks internal democracy and freedom. Because of their claim to infallibility, they showed a tendency towards the " totalitarian ". She states that “one-party dictatorships and multi-party systems have much more in common than two-party systems” . (P. 345)

But the, according to Arendt, tried and tested two-party system failed to create a public space in which citizens can become active. Citizens' opinions can only develop in public spaces. The press , the so-called fourth estate , offers the possibility of forming opinions, but also the possibility of manipulating journalists through relationships of dependency.

The parties hold the basic conviction that "the purpose of all politics is the welfare of the people, that in the right order of things politics must be eliminated in favor of administration." (P. 352) The welfare state is an administrative machine that is better off Administrative experts could be directed as by elected political representatives. The MPs are only civil servants with no real freedom of action. Arendt describes all of this as anti-political. Their greatest concern is the loss of the political in general.

At the same time, the parties distrust the people and equate them with the crowd. According to Arendt, the parties claim that the people cannot rule themselves and that political affairs are a burden that few would take on. The other way around, it is also the case that the people have great distrust of parties and the parliamentary system. It can therefore be easier for populist movements to transform the people into masses, the more incompetent the party system and the more corrupt the parliaments are.

The councils represent, stresses Arendt, a great danger for the parties. "No party ... has ever doubted that it would not be able to survive a real transformation of the state into a council system." (P. 351) Only in exceptional situations - war or revolution - one could use the councils. Then they had to be destroyed. Since the councils were politically neutral, they automatically became enemies of the parties.

The parties also questioned the councils' ability to administer the state. But that was never what the councils wanted. According to Arendt, councils are political organizations and not administrative machines. For example, the representatives of the workers' councils are selected according to political criteria and not according to whether they can run a company well. If you assign administrative tasks to workers' councils, they are overwhelmed. As in general, Arendt calls for a clear separation between the public political space, in which one can act freely, and the space that is to be regulated by experts through necessary processes. Both rooms require people with different skills.

For the political space Arendt repeatedly uses the metaphor of “the oasis in the desert” or “of islands in the sea of ​​necessities” to make it clear that here freedom is absolute. This area of ​​freedom comprises only a small area in (today's) human life that needs to be protected because it is threatened from outside. ( Jürgen Habermas uses similar terms when he speaks of "lifeworld" versus "system".)

Arendt introduces the concept of the elite , which is "embarrassing" because in the past it included a form of government in which a few ruled over many, "although political matters ... simply concern all residents of a territory" . (P. 355) However, political passions - courage, the pursuit of public happiness, the taste for public freedom, the pursuit of distinction, regardless of office, dignity and social position, even independent of success and fame, are not in all societies just widespread. "From the standpoint of the revolution and in the interests of maintaining the revolutionary spirit, it is not the re-formation of elites that is evil." (P. 357) She accuses the party system that the natal elite (nobles) have been abolished, However, a so-called people's elite is now in charge of government, which has not managed to create a free public space for the people in which an elite could form. The parties choose their elite according to criteria “which are themselves deeply apolitical. It is in the nature of the party system that it allows genuine political talent to arise only in exceptional cases. " (Ibid.)

The men gathered in the councils also formed an elite. However, it was "the only real elite from the people." (Ibid.) At every level of the council system up to the Supreme Council free and equal elections would take place, so that each representative would have the trust of its own kind. This form of government would "take on the ancient shape of the pyramid, but would not form an authoritarian government in which authority runs from top to bottom, but authority - united with equality - would, as it were, arise anew at every level of the pyramid" (p. 358) Arendt emphasizes that the elite selection outlined here applies to the political arena and not to other areas such as the cultural or scientific area.

Arendt does not describe the exact structure of the envisaged council system. Rather, it would be wiser to follow Jefferson, who only wanted to make a start with the elementary republics. At present (1963) it is important, she continues, to smash mass society. Public freedom, public happiness, and responsibility for public affairs would then fall to the few who, in all social and professional classes, would have a taste for them. “Only those who are really interested in the world should have a voice in the world. ... Such a regular absence from public affairs would in truth give substance and reality to one of the essential negative freedoms, namely freedom from politics ... ” (p. 360).

reception

According to Marie Luise Knott, Arendt “did not write a proper historical treatise on the revolutions, but a book of warning, an attempt to salvage the lost treasure of the revolution (above all the American Revolution).” Knott also writes On the Revolution, the “Text par excellence to act on the longing and the limits of freedom "and it is a treatise" on the revolutions without presenting a finished result of their research. "According to Knott, Arendt succeeds in thinking and writing" something new: the reader becomes. " to the - possible - actor, he carries out a self-authorization. "" She [Arendt] transforms the result into something negotiated and negotiable and gives today's readers new thinking about the political and human dilemmas of that time. Jefferson becomes a contemporary. In addition, revolutionary desires and values ​​are addressed in the reader: the longing not to sink into lethargy in the face of a political dilemma, but to look for new ways to keep the power of the revolution "in reserve". The reader transforms his mind back from consumer to producer. He does not consume the text, he thinks himself in the text. [...] his imagination is addressed. History is freed from its inevitability. [...] By creating the polyphony in the text, other people become conceivable who enter the "living room" with different thoughts. They exist, the plural readers. "

Seyla Benhabib criticizes among other things: “Arendt's attempt to separate the political from the economic by means of an ontological demarcation between freedom and necessity is… pointless and implausible. The realm of necessity is completely pervaded by power relations: power over the distribution of work, resources, authority, etc. ” Arendt does not deal with the problem of where the political ends and the“ social ”begins.

Her friend Mary McCarthy complains that she leaves economic and human welfare issues out of her consideration of the political. It could not be about talking per se, but about talking about something and about more than the question of war and peace. Arendt admits this and replies that public affairs have changed over the course of history. This still has to be examined historically. In this 1972 conversation with friends and colleagues in Toronto , dissent persisted as to whether a separation of the social and the political was possible. Arendt chooses residential construction as an example. The social problem is adequate housing, while questions of integration are a matter of political decision-making.

Oliver Marchart defends Arendt's approach, because “ if globalization took place in an area of ​​no alternative, then it could only be a question of either more efficient or fairer administration - ultimately, better globalization management. One would remain completely within the thinking horizon of the economic, i.e. the realm of necessity. But when it comes to the world , it is also about demands for democratization and for the expansion and multiplication of public spaces. Only then would the actual political alternative to the seemingly insurmountable horizon of the economic be. "

Benhabib also complains that Arendt did not see "that the American Revolution also had its share of violence and terror when the Civil War of 1861-1865 broke out a century later ." In contrast to the French Revolution, the violence lasted 100 years later.

Benhabib also emphasizes the effect that Arendt had on Habermas, especially through "the rediscovery of the concept of public space."

In a review ( Merkur 20, 1966), Habermas describes the book On the Revolution as "exciting and instructive" . But he also underlines that it teaches "how a philosophizing that once embraced the whole thing, even in its intellectually flexible forms, now solidifies to an imposing one-sidedness." Ten years later, Habermas takes up Arendt's concept of power, which she describes in Vita Activa and in Revolution book developed, back. According to Habermas, however, Arendt's concept of communicative power must be released "from its bracketing with his Aristotelian- inspired theory of action" . Nonetheless, Habermas comes to the following conclusion: “ Legitimate power only arises among those who form common convictions through informal communication. "At the end of the essay, Habermas accuses Arendt that " at the end of the day, she trusts the venerable figure of the contract more than her own concept of a communicative practice " .

Furthermore, he emphasizes that Arendt illuminates the “communication concept of power” in the book on totalitarianism and in the book of revolution from “opposing sides: the destruction of political freedom under totalitarian rule and the revolutionary justification of political freedom”.

In Between Facts and Norms Habermas 1988 reaches back to Arendt's concept of power back that emerges most clearly, "when revolutionaries seize power." At such moments, it is " always the same phenomenon of kinship of the communicative power legitimate with the generation law that H. Arendt in the various historical moments and for which you serve the constitutional power of the American Revolution as a model. ”But Habermas differentiates Arendt's concept of power, he suggests “ to consider law as the medium through which communicative power is transformed into administrative implements. "

Habermas also deals with the facticity and validity of the French Revolution and “revolutionary consciousness”. Similar to Arendt, he comes to the conclusion that "the principles of the constitution [...] will not take root in our minds until reason has ascertained its orientating, future-oriented content." Unlike Arendt, he emphasizes that “ The cultural dynamism triggered by the French Revolution has not stalled ”.

According Grit Strassenberger Arendt "with their revolutionary book one on Homer wrote oriented model narrative of profit and loss of political experience." The gain in the American Revolution after Strassenberger the possibility of Start ability, "the experience of the creation of a modern republic." The Loss is the unsuccessful implementation of the revolution, that “institutions have been found for everything, just not for the revolutionary spirit that supports them.” By this, Strassenberger means the councils. “ Just as Homer in the Iliad relates the war of extermination that went back centuries in such a way that the annihilation is undone in poetry, so Arendt tells the story of the revolutions as the story of the councils doomed by history. "

According to Helmut Dubiel , the book Über die Revolution in the early 1990s was “read more often than almost any other book in modern political theory.” The reason for this was the events after the turn of the year 1989 during the collapse of the Eastern Bloc . For Dubiel's On Revolution "a masterfully presented the history of ideas." Dubiel makes the case that over the revolution itself "as a pointed antithesis to its ( Carl Schmitt ) theory of the political" reading, though Arendt refers nowhere to Schmitt . Dubiel sees some similarities, e.g. B. in “public space”, what “the political” is and the “distance to bureaucratically institutionalized, routinized and professionalized politics ...” But “in their normative evaluation, the two differ so radically that each other - especially on the basis of similar initial assumptions - strictly contradicting positions. ” Arendt's big topic is “ the establishment of public freedom on the one hand and the “flight from freedom” ( Erich Fromm ) ... “ “ Carl Schmitt, on the other hand, hypostatizes the intrinsic value of a premodern, transcendently defined legitimacy so excessively that every political means is right for him to preserve the remnants of a premodern readiness to obey - and also the means of totalitarian rule . "

Annette Vowinckel claims that Arendt in Über die Revolution does not direct her gaze to “the break in tradition she diagnoses” , but rather follows the “traces of political freedom” . The book contained "neither a comprehensive history nor a theory of the revolution."

According to Vowinckel, Arendt did not want to write a normal history book, but “intended ... to put the 'spirit' of the revolution into words where - as she said - it unexpectedly rose from the depths of history to the surface and for a short time 'the World filled with shine '. "

Her method of “'pearl diving'”, “her conceptual idiosyncrasy” , has been sharply criticized by the respective experts, e. B. Hobsbawms , registered. Vowinckel puts forward the thesis that Arendt has a "view of history in which nothing can be derived organically or logically from the past, but in which one takes samples of the past in order to test them for their action-oriented content".

She elaborates on Arendt's rejection of Hegel's philosophy of history . There are after Arendt so Vowinckel, "neither the history nor the truth, but a collection of countless individual stories [...] and as many truths" . These "do not reveal themselves to the historian's eye by themselves, ... but have to be 'blown out' of the firmly established framework of the past."

Vowinckel sees the technique of 'pearl diving', of 'blasting out', a correspondence with Walter Benjamin , who collected quotations; Benjamin and Arendt were close friends until his suicide while on the run in France. Vowinckel also notes a similar approach with Karl Popper . "What is illuminated by Popper's headlights corresponds to the 'pearls' that Arendt brings to light during her dives into the past."

In addition, Arendt addressed many aspects in On the Revolution that Tocqueville, Burke or Montesquieu had already described; “Only the conception of the book and the option for council democracy as the best of all forms of government are actually original.” Nonetheless, Vowinckel writes that Über die Revolution “perhaps the last attempt (and, considering its current popularity, halfway successful), the To help history with the help of reason to its right, " was.

output

  • Hannah Arendt: About the Revolution ( On Revolution New York 1963), German edition 1965; Piper, 4th edition. Munich 1994, ISBN 3-492-21746-X .
  • Short version published in 2018 by Hannah Arendt:
The freedom to be free , translated from English by Andreas Wirthensohn, 2018, ISBN 978-3-4231-4651-7

Secondary literature

  • Seyla Benhabib : Hannah Arendt. The melancholy thinker of modernity . (Ed. Otto Kallscheuer) Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-88022-704-7 . (Original title: The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. 1996)
  • Jürgen Habermas : The story of the two revolutions (1966). In: Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-518-28259-X , pp. 223-228.
  • Jürgen Habermas: Hannah Arendt's concept of power. (1976) In: Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. Frankfurt 1987, pp. 228-248.
  • Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state. Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-518-28961-6 .
  • Wolfgang Heuer : Hannah Arendt . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1987, ISBN 3-499-50379-4 , pp. 52f, pp. 54-56, pp. 101-108.
  • Oliver Marchart : Start again. Hannah Arendt, the revolution and globalization. Turia + Kant publishing house, 2005, ISBN 3-85132-421-8 .
  • Oliver Marchart, Wolfgang Heuer: On Revolution / About the Revolution. In: Wolfgang Heuer, Bernd Heiter, Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.): Arendt manual. Life, work, effect. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02255-4 , Marchart pp. 84-89. This year pp. 89-91.
  • Annette Vowinckel: Arendt . Reclam, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-379-20303-3 , pp. 67-75.
  • Thomas Wild: Hannah Arendt . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-18217-X , pp. 82-97.
  • Elisabeth Young-Bruehl : Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-16010-3 , pp. 397-413, pp. 544-554. (American. Original edition 1982).

See also

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Marie Luise Knott: Unlearn. Paths of thought with Hannah Arendt . With drawings by Nanne Meyer. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2011, see above all the chapter “Translating - The» Unique Detour «”, pp. 37–89.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Heuer, Bernd Heiter, Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.): ––Arendt-Handbuch. Life, work, effect. Stuttgart 2011, p. 89.
  3. ^ Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Correspondence 1926–1969 , eds. Lotte Köhler / Hans Saner, New York 1992, Munich 2001, letter of May 15, 1963, p. 540.
  4. ↑ "With Blücher, Arendt had the living memory of revolutionary action sitting in the living room." Oliver Marchart : New start. Hannah Arendt, the revolution and globalization. Turia + Kant publishing house, 2005, p. 94f.
  5. ^ Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Blücher: Letters 1936–1968. Edited by Lotte Köhler & Hans Saner, New York 1992, Munich 2001, letter of March 4, 1963, p. 559.
  6. ↑ See also: Revolution and Freedom. In: Between the past and the future. Exercises in Political Thought I. 1949; Piper, Munich, 2nd edition. 2000, pp. 227-235.
  7. ↑ “ But nobody else has put the beginning as the beginning into the center of their own considerations like Hannah Arendt. “ Oliver Marchart : Start again. Hannah Arendt, the revolution and globalization. Turia + Kant publishing house, 2005, p. 17.
  8. ↑ "And the remedy against unpredictability - and thus against the chaotic uncertainty of everything future - lies in the ability to make and keep promises." (Hannah Arendt: Vita activa or Vom aktivigen Leben. Munich 2002, p. 301)
  9. ↑ Compare this with the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes .
  10. ↑ Already in antiquity, Polybius stated in his histories as striking that the Romans [in the 2nd century BC] showed such a strict observance of the law as other peoples showed the gods.
  11. ↑ This was also noticeable in the terminology of the French Revolution.
  12. ↑ Jefferson's Letters
  13. ^ Letter of February 2, 1816 to Cabel ( Memento of October 18, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ^ Marie Luise Knott: Unlearn. Paths of thought with Hannah Arendt . With drawings by Nanne Meyer. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2011, p. 57f.
  15. ^ Marie Luise Knott: Unlearn. Paths of thought with Hannah Arendt . With drawings by Nanne Meyer. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2011, p. 110.
  16. ^ A b Marie Luise Knott: Unlearn. Paths of thought with Hannah Arendt . With drawings by Nanne Meyer. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2011, p. 111.
  17. ↑ Seyla Benhabib: Hannah Arendt. The melancholy thinker of modernity . (Ed. Otto Kallscheuer) Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-88022-704-7 , original title: The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. 1996, pp. 251f.
  18. ↑ Hannah Arendt, I want to understand. Self-reports on life and work Introduction Ursula Ludz, Piper, Munich 1996, pp. 87ff.
  19. ↑ Oliver Marchart : Start over. Hannah Arendt, the revolution and globalization. Turia + Kant publishing house, 2005, p. 94f.
  20. ↑ Seyla Benhabib: Hannah Arendt. The melancholy thinker of modernity . (Ed. Otto Kallscheuer) Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-88022-704-7 , original title: The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. 1996, p. 255.
  21. ↑ Seyla Benhabib: Hannah Arendt. The melancholy thinker of modernity . (Ed. Otto Kallscheuer) Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-88022-704-7 , original title: The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. 1996, p. 310.
  22. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: The story of the two revolutions (1966). In: Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. Frankfurt, 1987, p. 223.
  23. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Hannah Arendt's concept of power. In: Jürgen Habermas: Philosophisch -politische Profiles , Frankfurt, 1987, p. 240.
  24. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Hannah Arendt's concept of power. In: Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. Frankfurt, 1987, p. 243.
  25. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Hannah Arendt's concept of power. In: Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. Frankfurt, 1987, p. 248.
  26. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Hannah Arendt's concept of power. In: Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. Frankfurt, 1987, p. 234.
  27. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state , Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 248.
  28. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 249.
  29. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 187.
  30. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state , Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 600ff.
  31. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 609.
  32. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 608.
  33. ↑ Grit Strassenberger: Compensation of political theory. In: Wolfgang Heuer, Irmela von der Lühe (Ed.): Thinking poetically. Hannah Arendt and the arts. Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0131-3 , p. 237.
  34. ↑ Grit Strassenberger: Compensation of political theory. In: Wolfgang Heuer, Irmela von der Lühe (Ed.): Thinking poetically. Hannah Arendt and the arts. Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0131-3 , p. 238.
  35. ^ Helmut Dubiel: Uncertainty and Politics. Frankfurt, 1994, p. 29.
  36. ^ Helmut Dubiel: Uncertainty and Politics. Frankfurt, 1994, p. 30.
  37. ^ A b Helmut Dubiel: Uncertainty and Politics. Frankfurt, 1994, p. 41.
  38. ^ Helmut Dubiel: Uncertainty and Politics. Frankfurt, 1994, p. 41f.
  39. ^ Helmut Dubiel: Uncertainty and Politics. Frankfurt, 1994, p. 42.
  40. ^ Helmut Dubiel: Uncertainty and Politics. Frankfurt, 1994, p. 42.
  41. ^ Annette Vowinckel: Concept of history and historical thinking in Hannah Arendt. Cologne, 2001, ISBN 3-412-03401-0 , p. 291.
  42. ↑ a b Annette Vowinckel (2001), p. 292.
  43. ↑ Annette Vowinckel (2001) p. 223, p. 293.
  44. ↑ Annette Vowinckel (2001), p. 293.
  45. ↑ Annette Vowinckel (2001), p. 304.
  46. ↑ Annette Vowinckel (2001), p. 326f.
  47. ↑ Annette Vowinckel (2001), p. 327.
  48. ^ Annette Vowinckel: Concept of history and historical thinking in Hannah Arendt. P. 329.
  49. ^ Annette Vowinckel: Concept of history and historical thinking in Hannah Arendt. P. 293.
  50. ↑ Annette Vowinckel (2001), p. 312.
  51. ↑ Reviews: Lust for Freedom and Hunger for Bread , NZZ, January 19, 2018 and your freedom knows neither need nor fear , DLF, January 18, 2018