Arendt’s Machiavellian moment

Arendt and Machiavelli: History over philosophy

References to Arendt’s treatment of Machiavelli are de rigueur in the Arendt literature. Where this influence is noted, scholars often focus on one particular aspect of Machiavelli’s thought that they judge as having had the greatest impact on Arendt. ⁶ Upon a careful reading of Arendt’s published writings and her lecture on Machiavelli we find, however, that the impact of the Florentine is far greater than these studies suggest. Arendt reads Machiavelli as offering three critical insights into politics: (i) Machiavelli offers a performative understanding of politics, (ii) he gives politics the primacy it deserves, and (iii) he presents an accurate understanding of the relationship between morality and politics. Of these three only the last has received wide attention in the Arendt literature.

Arendt credits Machiavelli with approaching political experiences of the past in a distinct manner not shared by other political philosophers, setting Machiavelli apart as a unique author in the tradition. In her essay ‘What is Authority?’ Arendt notes that ‘it is curious to see how seldom Cicero’s name occurs in Machiavelli’s writing and how carefully he avoided him in his interpretation of Roman history.’ The reason for this, she argues, is that Machiavelli’s turn to Rome was aimed at ‘search[ing] for the central political experience of the Romans.’ ⁷ Machiavelli wishes then through his reading of Livy to get as close as possible to the lived experience of the Romans. Arendt reads Machiavelli’s choice of Livy over Cicero, of the historian over the philosopher, as resulting from Machiavelli’s desire to steer clear of the reification that political experience is subjected to in the writings of philosophers. Arendt not only endorses this approach but follows it in her own work. When examining the concept of freedom she writes that we must: ‘go back once more to antiquity, i.e. to its political and pre-philosophic traditions, certainly not for the sake of erudition and not even because of the continuity of our tradition, but merely because a freedom experienced in the process of acting and nothing else – though, of course, mankind never lost this experience altogether – has never again been articulated with the same classical clarity. However, for reasons we mentioned before and which we cannot discuss here, this articulation is nowhere more difficult to grasp than in the writings of the philosophers.’ ⁸ Arendt shares Machiavelli’s suspicion of philosophers; she too writes not in order to portray imagined republics but to capture the political experiences of the ancients.

Machiavelli’s approach to history is of sufficient significance for Arendt as to place him in a different category than other writers in the philosophic tradition. Arendt distinguishes between philosophers and political writers, and counts Machiavelli among the latter. ⁹ Machiavelli takes a political writer’s approach to history, stressing the interplay between distance and continuity in his account of Rome. His understanding of the continuity between the past and the present is illustrated most clearly in the Discourses as when he states: ‘From this it arises that the infinite number who read them [histories] without thinking of imitating them, judging that imitation is not only difficult but impossible – as if heaven, sun, elements, men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity.’ ¹⁰ Yet the matter is not as simple as imitation; Machiavelli is after all treading ‘a path as yet untrodden by anyone,’ and is offering ‘new modes and orders.’ ¹¹ Thus, Machiavelli both holds that a certain continuity ensures the relevance of the past to the present, and yet recognizes that the present calls for something new rather than simple imitation. ¹² Continuing this theme of imitation, Machiavelli writes in the preface of Book I of the Discourses of the ‘honor awarded to antiquity,’ and describes how the ‘fragment of an ancient statue’ is valued because it serves as a model for imitation. But, he notes, that this is not the case in political affairs. While in this preface he merely wonders at this difference of status, he provides us with a possible reason for the divergence in the preface to the second book. There he writes, ‘I am not reasoning about things pertaining to the arts, which have so much clarity in themselves that the times can take away or give them little glory than they may deserve in themselves, but am speaking of those pertaining to the life and customs of men, of which such clear testimonies are not seen [delle quali non se ne veggono si chiari testimoni].’ ¹³

In her 1955 lecture notes on Machiavelli, Arendt quotes precisely the above passage from the Discourses and describes it as a ‘crucial passage.’ ¹⁴ Arendt gives this passage special status as she finds in it two key ideas that she develops in her own writings. First, Arendt shares Machiavelli’s approach to history. Even as she mines the past, Arendt makes it clear that she is not under the illusion that one can simply imitate it. Indeed, the engagement with the past is to highlight the distance between it and the present. This distance does not, however, preclude the possibility of learning from the past. The thinker who turns to the past, she writes, is ‘like a pearl diver who descends to the bottom of the sea, not to excavate the bottom and bring it to light but to pry loose the rich and strange, the pearls and the corals in the depths and to carry them to the surface, this thinking delves into the depths of the past – but not in order to resuscitate it the way it was and to contribute to the renewal of extinct ages. What guides this thinking is the conviction that although the living is subject to the ruin of time, the process of decay is at the same time a process of crystallization.’ ¹⁵ The image of the diver highlights the distance that separates the past from the present, a distance that requires special effort to overcome. Yet, were the past and present so utterly discontinuous, the diver’s treasure would not be worth much at the surface. The past, therefore, is not so foreign as to make what was valuable yesterday worthless today.

Second, this ‘crucial’ passage offers a linguistic parallel suggestive of a deeper connection between the two authors. Arendt opens the preface of Between Past and Future by quoting René Char: ‘our inheritance was left us by no testament.’ She explains that Char wrote this against the background ‘of the collapse of France, to them a totally unexpected event, [that] had emptied, from one day to the next, the political scene of their country.’ ¹⁶ The role of history in communicating to us the political experiences of the past and offering guidance for current practice is limited by the nature of the testaments that political actions leave behind. Just as in Machiavelli’s Florence, the political for Arendt fails to leave behind testimonies. In contrasting the fragments of the statue and the lack of testimonies in politics, Machiavelli is distinguishing the plastic arts from the performative arts and likening politics to the latter. Arendt’s quotation from Char points to a similar conception of the political. For Arendt then, Machiavelli’s passage is crucial because it reveals a conception of the political that she shares. Both the quote from Char and Machiavelli’s statement from the preface suggest that while the object nature of what is produced in the plastic arts allows the product at least a minimal continued existence, this is not the case with the performative arts. If at all we can speak of a ‘product’ of the performative arts we can only point to the ‘world’ that is created as long as the action continues. Political action thus shares both these features of the performative arts: It creates a world whose existence depends on continued action, and its remembrance depends upon others. Presence in politics, as in the performative arts, is dependent on continued performance, which, once it ends, leaves nothing but a memory in the spectator’s mind, with no tangible testament. What essentially makes the political order – humans acting in concert – is sustained only through the continued activity of these agents. Thus, we find that few testaments of the political world of bygone eras are found, except in the writings and descriptions of historians. That Machiavelli brings up the plastic arts and contrasts them with politics is read by Arendt as an indication that he conceives of politics on the model of the performative arts. ¹⁷

The political actor

When the political is conceived of as the realm of appearance, in which a public persona is displayed, far from unmasking, one is actually called on to put on a mask. Arendt connects the problem of hypocrisy with the larger philosophical concern of the relationship between being and appearance. In elucidating this problem as it relates to politics, she points to Machiavelli as the thinker in the Christian era to have articulated a position on the issue of being and appearance that shows the deepest concern for the political world – for the world of appearances. Machiavelli recognizes that the individual who appears in public wearing the mask of virtue is a boon for the public world, because while ‘his virtue will have improved the world…his vices remain hidden, and he will have known how to hide them not because of any pretence to virtue but because he felt they were not fit to be seen.’ ¹⁸ That ‘we read this as hypocrisy’ is, for Arendt, symptomatic of our lost understanding of what distinguishes the political.

Arendt’s model of political action calls for a unique set of characteristics from the political actor. First, her model of political action requires the actor to draw a sharp distinction between the private and public self. In doing so it repudiates the search for authenticity and the effort to hunt out hypocrisy. Thus, the political provides a stage only for appearance, where the individual’s public self is displayed. For Arendt, Machiavelli recognizes the political realm as such a stage. Arendt thus sees Machiavelli not as a purveyor of hypocrisy, but rather as highlighting a key feature of the political – one that reveals a basic congruity between the conceptions of the political of the two authors. In her lecture on Machiavelli she notes ‘In politics: we must appear, see and be seen, hear and be heard, what we show we are, not vice versa.’ ¹⁹ Machiavelli, in Arendt’s view, saw this fundamental feature of the political that calls on the actor to be aware of how she appears in public. For Arendt, when Machiavelli writes that ‘men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands, because seeing is given to everyone, touching to few’ he is communicating a fundamental truth about the nature of what the political actor is called to do. ²⁰ For Machiavelli, Arendt writes, ‘it never matters whether the Prince is or seems to be this or that. Important is his appearance. No question of authenticity.’ ²¹ Yet this need not lead ineluctably to hypocrisy, for the diremption between the public and private is necessitated by the sort of action and judgment that is called for on the political stage. ²² Far from seeing hypocrisy as a major problem, Arendt imputes the excesses of modern revolutions to the desire to do away with it. ²³

Animating principle: The unworldly quality of goodness

In her effort to ensure the autonomy of the political Arendt refuses to answer the question ‘what is politics good for?’ Here again Arendt finds in Machiavelli an ally. In her lecture notes on Machiavelli she remarks that ‘Machiavelli never asks: what is politics good for? Nobody except him leaves out this question altogether. Politics has no higher aim than itself.’ ²⁴ This is in stark contrast to the tradition that, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, gives a variety of answers to the question: for Plato politics aims to make philosophy possible; for Aristotle it makes the good life possible; with the moderns, politics aims to ensure self-preservation, or the protection of property broadly understood. For Arendt, Machiavelli is the only exception to this. Yet while Arendt in common with Machiavelli refuses to answer the question ‘what is politics good for?’ she recognizes that an animating principle is essential if individuals are to leave the private realm to enter the public realm. Arendt stresses two points through her use of the term ‘principle’: (i) that free action is not guided by the intellect or the will, and (ii) that the principle is manifested only as long as the action guided by it continues. Further, what distinguishes principles is that they are ‘much too general to prescribe particular goals.’ Arendt cites, ‘honor or glory, love of equality….but also fear or distrust or hatred’ as examples of principles. ²⁵

Machiavelli’s politics is for Arendt indeed animated by one single principle: glory. That it is glory which animates politics, entails a whole chain of consequences for the political realm. Glory requires that one act in public and be judged by others. Glory, that is, is something that shines through only in public. To give politics back its dignity and then claim that glory is the animating principle in politics, leads Arendt to take a side on a number of dichotomies: immortality over eternity, and the vita activa over the vita contemplativa. With glory as the animating principle, one seeks immortality in this world, and this immortality can only be attained through action, that is by leading the vita activa. These dichotomies closely parallel those found in Machiavelli. We have first Machiavelli’s famous concern for the city over his soul, which Arendt reads as his rejection of eternity. Second, we have the dichotomy between the life of the soldier and that of the priest, which parallels the choice between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. ²⁶ What is most significant to this discussion is not so much that Arendt affirms the same principle as Machiavelli, but that she sees Machiavelli as refusing to answer the question ‘what is politics good for?’ and instead pointing to glory, which for her qualifies as an animating principle.

Machiavelli’s affirmation of glory as the animating principle points to another key insight that Arendt finds in his work. In affirming glory Machiavelli rejects goodness as an animating principle, and Arendt is in fundamental agreement with Machiavelli on this point. ²⁷ Machiavelli, Arendt writes, rejects both the Greek conception of the good understood as ‘ “good for” or fitness’ and the ‘Christian concept of absolute goodness,’ since neither of these two understandings of the good is applicable in the public realm. ²⁸ While Arendt agrees with this analysis she takes Machiavelli’s analysis further. For Arendt, goodness cannot be the animating principle in politics not because it fails to lead to the desired ends in politics – that is, not for its consequences – but because its appearance in public destroys goodness. This is so because to make good work public is to compromise its status as having been done solely ‘for goodness sake.’ Thus, to the extent that politics is concerned with the public world, goodness cannot be its animating principle. Furthermore, Arendt holds that absolute goodness, has no place in politics, for it can ‘only act violently,’ and it is ‘incapable of learning the arts of persuading and arguing.’ ²⁹ Yet even as she extends the analysis of the insufficiency of goodness in the public realm beyond Machiavelli, she credits him as the forerunner on this issue, writing: ‘Goodness, therefore, as a consistent way of life, is not only impossible within the confines of the public realm, it is even destructive of it. Nobody perhaps has been more sharply aware of this ruinous quality of doing good than Machiavelli, who in a famous passage, dared to teach men ‘how not to be good.’’ ³⁰

Means-ends calculus and violence

While the preceding has in summary fashion charted the influence of Machiavelli on Arendt’s basic categories, we have yet to broach two key issues that divide the authors. First, Arendt’s concern with retaining the autonomy of the political leads her to reject the means-ends calculus that has come to be associated with Machiavelli. And, second, where Machiavelli’s writings convey in stark terms the necessity of violence, Arendt views violence as non-political and regards its use as a sign that one is no longer engaged in politics.

Arendt has two basic reservations against admitting the means-ends calculus into politics. Likening the relationship between means and ends to a ‘chain whose every end can serve again as a means in some other context,’ she argues that once the means-ends calculus is allowed we open ourselves to the danger that humans themselves will become means to ends. ³¹ One could respond that the way out of this infinite regress is to make the Kantian move of positing human beings as ends in themselves. But this leads to the second problem that troubles Arendt about the means-ends calculus. Even in an anthropocentric world, where humans are posited as ends, the means-ends calculus poses a problem for it leads to a devaluation of the world; everything in the world is seen as a means to some end, and this fundamentally alters humans’ relationship to the world. This devaluation of the world leads us to a deeper problem with the means-ends calculus. When seen from a political perspective, it seems the means-ends calculus could be limited to achieving ends on the political scene. However, because instrumental thinking renders the whole world a means, politics too loses its autonomy and becomes a means on this account. In assessing Arendt’s position vis-à-vis Machiavelli’s we must be attentive to both levels at which Arendt sees the means-ends calculus as problematic.

That Machiavelli’s account runs up against the first problem related by Arendt regarding the means-ends calculus is evident from the fact that he calls for Romulus to be excused for ‘homicides’ he committed. ³² What complicates matters is the fact that Arendt reads Machiavelli as having succeeded in avoiding the second problem that arises when one deploys the means-ends calculus. In order to explain how Arendt thinks Machiavelli manages to avoid undermining the autonomy of the political, in this way, one must consider the discussion of the means-ends calculus in The Human Condition. Here Arendt introduces a distinction between ‘in order to’ and ‘for the sake of.’ ³³ When an action is undertaken ‘in order to’ one is concerned with use. On the other hand, when something is done ‘for the sake of’ one is concerned with meaning. Furthermore, with the former type of action the standard of whether a means is appropriate comes from outside the sphere of activity one is involved in, while in the case of an activity undertaken ‘for the sake of’ the criteria comes from within the sphere. This discussion in The Human Condition features Kant, and later Plato and Protagoras, with no mention of Machiavelli. However, we find that these categories are articulated in Arendt’s lecture notes on Machiavelli, which predate both the publication of The Human Condition and her delivery of the Walgreen Lectures (on which the former was based). In her lecture on Machiavelli (dating from 1955), we find that Arendt articulates the categories of ‘in order to’ and ‘for the sake of’ while discussing Machiavelli’s view of the status of politics. Machiavelli, in Arendt’s estimation, succeeds in avoiding the second problem since he makes politics ‘for the sake of’ rather than an ‘in order to.’ This ensures that meaning rather than use is the criterion. And furthermore, one engages in politics to ensure that the site where political action takes place is preserved, because it is only this site that gives meaning to the action. The ‘meaning comes from the same world’ ³⁴ and no appeal is made to a sphere outside of politics. That is, any means that would destroy the site of political action will be disallowed by virtue of the fact that the action would have no meaning without the site of the political and would undermine that for the sake of which politics is for.

While all this is abstract, Arendt shows how Machiavelli concretizes the notion of the ‘for the sake of’ and illustrates how means can be limited based on drawing meaning from politics. To say that politics is ‘for the sake of’ ensuring the site where political action can take place could strike one as tautological, for the statement in effect seems to say that politics is for the sake of politics. Machiavelli offers us a way out of this by positing the state (lo stato) as the site of political action where greatness and glory can be attained. Actions that undermine or endanger the continued survival of this space cannot bring greatness and glory, since these actions undermine the conditions of possibility of greatness and glory. Machiavelli, thus, while being a purveyor of a means-ends calculus in politics, does not, in Arendt’s view, undermine the autonomy of the political. In fact, he stands as the only theorist who does not do so. The limits to the use of the means-ends calculus in Machiavelli’s account come from the need to protect the site where political action takes place. One is of course led to wonder what role the means-ends calculus will play when the matter of establishing the site where political action can take place is broached. It is here that Arendt seems to diverge most sharply from Machiavelli.

Beginnings, founding, and natality

Machiavelli has been termed the ‘theorist of beginnings’ with good reason. ³⁵ Not only does he recommend ‘new modes and orders,’ his meditations focus on the moments when something new comes into the world. He writes in the Discourses: ‘Among all men praised, the most praised are those who have been heads and orderers of religion. Next, then, are those who have founded either republics or kingdoms.’ ³⁶ While beginnings as such are praise worthy, it is beginnings in the political sphere that earn special remark. The parallel category in Arendt’s thought is natality. This is the ‘capacity of beginning something anew,’ which Arendt equates with political action. ³⁷ Founding and natality both require that the individual come out into the public realm to act. Where Machiavelli and Arendt differ is in their ascription of this ability to humans.

For Machiavelli, the founder must be alone. Beginnings are thus the acts of individuals. This must be the case primarily due to the diverging opinions among individuals that make it difficult for them to agree on a collective course of action. But this inability is beneficial, for once the individual founder has ordered the republic, the inability of the people to agree makes it likely that they will not be able to reach a consensus on destroying the order. Through all this the ability to begin something new is ascribed by Machiavelli only to a select few. ³⁸ Arendt, on the other hand, does not limit the ability to begin something new to the few. While she agrees with Machiavelli that courage is necessary to come out into the public and begin something new, her category of natality is applied universally to humans. She defines action as ‘engag[ing] in founding and preserving political bodies, create[ing] the condition for remembrance, that is, for history,’ and sees action as ‘connected with the most general condition of human existence.’ ³⁹ Thus, while Arendt shares Machiavelli’s concern with beginnings, for Arendt this ability is a universal feature of the human condition. This divergence is best understood in light of two key features of Arendt’s thought: (i) her concern with human plurality, and (ii) her insistence on avoiding the application of the fabrication model to politics.

Machiavelli and Arendt begin with a shared view of what human plurality implies – a multiplicity of opinions. For Arendt the political sphere is most decidedly the sphere of doxa. Machiavelli’s stress on the need for the founder to be alone is based precisely on the need to overcome the multiplicity of opinion, which stems from the reality of human plurality. Machiavelli’s position is therefore opposed to Arendt’s, for he views human plurality as a challenge to politics, rather than ‘the conditio sine qua non or conditio per quam of politics.’ ⁴⁰

Machiavelli’s focus on the individual at the founding moment is read by Arendt not only as a symptom of his desire to overcome plurality, but also as the result of Machiavelli’s application of the fabrication model to the founding moment. The lone individual at the founding moment moulds the people and creates a space where political action can take place. With the application of the fabrication model to the founding moment Machiavelli also opens the door to the use of violence as an acceptable means of establishing space for the political. Machiavelli therefore, in Arendt’s eyes, does not entirely escape the hold of the tradition; the means-ends calculus seems to be the very ground on which political space is created.

In tracing the influence of Machiavelli on Arendt’s thought I have made the case that the performative model of politics that retains the autonomy of the political can be traced to Arendt’s meditation on Machiavelli. Yet it seems that in his account of founding Machiavelli does in fact succumb to the tradition’s approach of applying the fabrication model to politics. This does not, however, undermine the case for understanding Arendt as fundamentally inspired by Machiavelli, for Arendt herself cannot ultimately sustain the rejection of violence tout court.

The question of violence

Arendt famously terms violence nonpolitical. In opposition to Machiavelli’s realism, she argues that far from being the content of politics violence is in point of fact opposed to politics. Arendt views the equation of violence with politics as the result of a failure to make two key distinctions. First, the recourse to violence in politics stems from the failure to distinguish between freedom and sovereignty. If one makes the case that to be free one must be sovereign, i.e. to control, then recourse to violence necessarily becomes part of the effort to gain mastery and control. Second, the easy acceptance of violence in politics is the result of the failure to distinguish between violence and power, and to assume that one can substitute violence for power as the basis of politics. Arendt picks one side of each of these dichotomies – freedom and power, as against sovereignty and violence, respectively – and argues that both are connected to human plurality. Freedom does not, for her, consist in control but rather in the ability ‘to begin something new’ without being able to ‘control or even foretell its consequences.’ ⁴¹ As for the distinction between violence and power, Arendt considers power as emerging from the solidarity that comes from acting in concert. It is this combination of freedom and power that allows Arendt’s thought to avoid Promethean hubris without falling prey to a celebratory or quietist acceptance of fate. Machiavelli’s emphasis on violence suggests that such a balance is not found in his writings.

Machiavelli’s insistence on the need for violence, Arendt writes, has deep roots in the tradition that can be traced back to Cain’s slaying of Abel and Romulus’s killing of Remus. ⁴² While Arendt may be correct in attributing to the tradition the roots of this view connecting foundation to violence, her account of why this focus has been retained in Machiavelli is less convincing. The question at stake is whether Machiavelli’s focus on the need for violence is indeed the result of the application of the fabrication model to politics. While one could contend that the very narratives are the result of applying the fabrication model to politics, it is difficult to impute to Machiavelli a desire to make the facts conform to a model. Far from forcing a theoretical model onto the pages of political history, Machiavelli is involved in lifting the veil that shrouds foundations. For him, this serves to better expose the extent to which the seemingly sacred acts of founding are consecrated in blood. Arendt betrays a resistance to acknowledging what goes on behind the veil, though her writings suggest that she is ultimately forced to accept the truth that Machiavelli offers.

Arendt’s untenable resistance to Machiavelli’s portrayal of the founding moment is most evident in her presentation of authority in Rome. Where Machiavelli makes it clear that authority in Rome depended on religion (which held sway due to the fear it induced) and the use of violence, Arendt attempts to demonstrate how in Rome authority was separable from the use of violence. This authority, Arendt holds, was understood to rest on the sacredness of foundations, which were augmented through authority. Machiavelli, by contrast, writes of the need for re-founding and returning to beginnings, a process that often requires reliance on extraordinary means. That there is something amiss in Arendt’s presentation is most evident in her efforts to minimize the violence necessary both to found Rome and to lead it to greatness. In her essay ‘What is Authority?’ she makes little mention of the originary violence that laid the foundations of Rome. ⁴³ Indeed, she only mentions the question of violence towards the end when writing of Machiavelli. ⁴⁴ Pace Machiavelli, Arendt argues that the Romans made an effort to dissociate themselves from Romulus’s originary violence. ⁴⁵ In doing this, however, she ignores Machiavelli’s efforts to expose the violent founding and re-foundings that he felt were the necessary conditions for Rome’s greatness. Furthermore, Arendt’s argument that violence became more important when the vengeance of the gods was moved from this world to the next is hard to sustain. But perhaps one could be more generous to Arendt, for her the founding moment par excellence is not Romulus’s founding of Rome, but the founding of the United States. This example, while seemingly a better fit for Arendt’s case, ultimately remains problematic, for Arendt speaks surprisingly little of the American Civil War.

A more detailed examination of Arendt’s writings on the subject reveals, however, that she is not entirely oblivious to the fact that violence often makes its appearance in politics. She observes: ‘power and violence, though they are distinct phenomena, usually appear together.’ ⁴⁶ It seems, then that Arendt is not contesting the tradition on descriptive grounds. That is, while recognizing the ubiquity of violence, perhaps she holds that recourse to it is in fact not necessary. But evidence to the contrary may be found in her own writings. While she asserts that ‘every bad action for the sake of a good end actually adds to the world a portion of badness,’ she also recognizes that being good alone does not suffice. ⁴⁷ In the face of totalitarianism she is forced to admit the necessity of violence. Indeed, she called for a ‘Jewish army’ during the Second World War, pointedly wondering whether it might not herald the ‘beginning of a Jewish politics.’ ⁴⁸ Thus, while Arendt is reluctant to openly endorse the realism of Machiavelli, she is in the end forced to recognize not only the empirical reality that politics often involves violence, but the necessity of deploying force when the political realm is in danger.

In the above I have brought to attention the parallels between some of the central categories of Arendt’s thought and her reading of Machiavelli. Even on a subject such as violence on which we would expect the greatest divergence between Arendt and Machiavelli, we find that at the limit Arendt comes to recognize the lesson that Machiavelli imparts. What is more, some of the central categories that make their way into Arendt’s political writings are first articulated in her lecture notes on Machiavelli. While all this suggests that we place greater emphasis on the republican provenance of Arendt’s thought, even a tentative case for a republican Arendt inspired primarily by Machiavelli cannot be made without an assessment of the impact of two other thinkers on her thought: Aristotle and Heidegger. I proceed to a discussion of these authors in what follows.

Arendt’s reading of Aristotle

Aristotle’s influence on Arendt is perhaps most evident in her appropriation of the distinction between poiesis and praxis. This distinction informs Arendt’s tripartite analysis in The Human Condition. Labor and work fit under the category of poiesis, while Aristotle’s presentation of praxis captures important aspects of what Arendt calls action. Praxis, as opposed to poiesis, is, for Aristotle, self-contained; there is, in other words, seemingly no other end except the action itself. ⁴⁹ This self-contained praxis, of course, closely resembles Arendt’s conception of the political.

Purportedly following Aristotle, Arendt defines noncontiguous sites for the two types of activity. Poiesis is relegated to the household or economic sphere, the oikos is the site of poiesis, while the polis is distinguished from the oikos as the site of praxis. ⁵⁰ Arendt appropriates this division of sites in order to stress a sharp distinction between the private and public realm. More importantly, however, the distinction between the oikos and polis allows Arendt to delimit the concerns that legitimately belong in each site.

This distinction between the oikos and the polis, and the concerns relevant to each, allows Arendt to launch her critique of modern politics – in particular of liberalism. Modern politics by making the question of economic well-being the raison d’être of the state, leads to concerns that belong properly in the private realm to be brought into the public realm. By ruling out concerns seemingly central to human existence from the political, Arendt aims to highlight the inadequacy of a life devoted to security and economic well-being alone. All activities conducted for economic well-being should, by Arendt’s reckoning fall under poiesis and be instrumental to other ends. By excluding these activities from the public sphere then, she makes the latter the site for self-contained action. In Arendt’s thought this translates into the autonomy of the political.

While the preceding argument presents a strong case for Aristotle’s influence on Arendt’s thinking about politics, we find on closer examination that Arendt’s final position is that Aristotle ultimately fails to maintain the distinctions described above, and falls prey to the problem she sees as characterizing the Western tradition of political thought. In her final assessment of Aristotle, she charges him with two faults: (i) Aristotle fails to uphold the poiesis-praxis distinction, and (ii) while starting with the distinction between the oikos and polis, he ends up smuggling in categories that apply to the household into the polis. ⁵¹ Both these failures stem from the fact that Aristotle’s politics is teleological.

While presenting praxis as self-contained, Aristotle still in the end does respond to the question ‘what is politics good for?’ Politics for Aristotle is for the good life and by Arendt’s reckoning it is this fateful step that leads Aristotle to undermine the distinction between the oikos and the polis, and then to apply categories that hold in the household to the polis. ⁵² By making politics good for something while maintaining that politics involves praxis, leads Aristotle, in Arendt’s estimation, to put into question the self-containedness of praxis. With the loss of this distinction, Arendt argues, Aristotle ends up applying the categories of rule and education that belong in the private realm to the public realm. The result is that Aristotle ends up putting the self-containedness of praxis into question, and by making politics subservient to an end, he fails to maintain the autonomy of the political. This is most evident from Aristotle’s privileging of the bios theoritkos over the bios politikos. For Arendt, then even as some of the central features of the Greek political experience make their way into Aristotle’s writings, they are distorted, as Aristotle does not fully escape the influence of Plato.

In Heidegger’s shadow?

If Arendt is involved in only a partial appropriation of Aristotle, can the same be said of her relationship to existenz philosophy, and Heidegger in particular? That Arendt is no slavish follower of Jaspers and Heidegger, nor simply a representative of the school of existenz philosophy, is evident from her many disagreements and departures from their thought. Yet her biography and personal testimony lead her readers to suppose a deep influence on her thought of existenz philosophy in general, and of Heidegger in particular. ⁵³ Arendt’s innovations are then read as a response to the shortcomings she found in the writings of this school. ⁵⁴ We are thus left with a seemingly stark choice, which turns out to be no choice at all: either Arendt is thinking with Heidegger, or, if one recognizes her divergences from Heidegger, then she is viewed as thinking ‘against Heidegger.’ ⁵⁵ The result of this intellectual Hobson’s choice is that Arendt can never escape Heidegger’s hold. The preliminary evidence marshaled by these readings is that Arendt seems to be involved in an inversion of many of the categories associated with Heidegger’s thought. In what follows I examine some of these seeming inversions and show that far from simply inverting Heideggerian categories, Arendt is involved in rethinking the categories in light of the fundamental importance that she accords to politics. A simple inversion of Heidegger’s categories does not suffice to account for Arendt’s thought, or even serve as an adequate starting point for her theorizing about politics. Arendt is in fundamental disagreement with Heidegger and views the shortcomings of his philosophy as continuous with those of the Western tradition of philosophy.

Natality, authenticity, and the public sphere

A seemingly paradigmatic case of Arendt’s thinking against Heidegger is her stress on natality. By focusing on natality Arendt seems to be involved in a simple transposition of Heidegger’s stress on being-toward-death in Being and Time. ⁵⁶ Heidegger, however, explicitly discusses both natality and death in Being and Time. In Division II of this work, Heidegger notes that his analysis thus far has remained ‘one-sided’ since it has only taken one end of Dasein, namely death, into account. ⁵⁷ Heidegger then points to birth as the other end of Dasein. The presentation of birth as an end introduces his discussion of historicity and destiny. In Heidegger’s account therefore birth represents an end in the sense that at birth one is handed down possibilities that one must make one’s own. Far from being a beginning of the new, birth represents Dasein’s tie to the past. Arendt, by stressing that natality represents the ever-present possibility of the new, is not simply transposing Heidegger’s stress on being-toward-death, but rather is suggesting a fundamentally different vision of the human condition. Where Heidegger’s account stresses the limits that Dasein faces, Arendt focuses on humans’ ability to begin anew. ⁵⁸

The second instance in which Arendt seems to be engaged in a reversal of Heideggerian categories, is in the role she gives to the public realm. In the preface to Men in Dark Times Arendt writes that the times when the public realm no longer provides ‘a space of appearance in which [individuals] can show in deed and word, for better or worse, who they are and what they can do,’ are described by Heidegger with ‘uncanny precision.’ She then writes: ‘in our context the point is that the sarcastic, perverse-sounding statement Das Licht der Öffentlichkeit verdunkelt alles (the light of the public obscures everything), went to the very heart of the matter and actually was no more than the most succinct summing-up of existing conditions.’ ⁵⁹ This statement, it turns out, is more than a summing up of existing conditions. In Being and Time the public is the realm of the inauthentic where ‘the they’ predominate. ⁶⁰ It is the site of fallenness and inauthenticity. Nothing could of course be more opposed to Arendt’s vision of the public sphere. Here, as with her conception of natality, Arendt has been read as ‘transposing’ the site of the authentic and inauthentic. Where for Heidegger the public realm is the site of the inauthentic and a turn to the self is necessary to attain authenticity, it has been argued that for Arendt it is precisely the public realm that is the site of ‘authentic disclosure.’ Arendt is thus viewed as having politicized the authenticity–inauthenticity distinction. ⁶¹ For this argument to hold, however, one would need to show that authenticity and inauthenticity feature as meaningful modes of existence in her thought.

How then does Arendt’s theory stand vis-à-vis Heidegger’s presentation of authenticity and the moods necessary for attaining authentic existence? While guilt and anxiety are an integral part of the jargon of authenticity, the terms are not part of Arendt’s theoretical lexicon. One can, however, get an idea of Arendt’s position on the issue by probing her views on the two ends of Dasein as defined by Heidegger. These two ends, it turns out, do indeed play an important role in Arendt’s writings. She announces early in The Human Condition the importance of the two ‘most general conditions of human existence: birth and death, natality and mortality.’ ⁶² However, her divergence from Heidegger becomes clear straightaway, for she announces that all three activities that constitute the vita activa relate to these general conditions. Even as she privileges action as having ‘the closest connection with the human condition of natality,’ her acknowledgment that all three activities relate somehow to birth and death suggests that she does not distinguish between an authentic and inauthentic appreciation and acting in the face of these two general conditions. ⁶³ What is more, Arendt does not simply transpose Heidegger’s hierarchy and make the public realm the site where both the general conditions of humans are squarely faced and dealt with. Finally, she explicitly states that metaphysical thought is rightly concerned with death, and thus her focus on natality is related to her concern with politics. ⁶⁴ Heidegger’s focus on being-toward death is thus a reflection of his metaphysical concerns, and more importantly reveals that he remains mired in the tradition that sidelines politics.

If authenticity for Heidegger involves facing up to one’s mortality and one’s situatedness, Arendt’s privileging of action and natality is aimed more at overcoming than acceptance. Action offers humans a venue where they can temporarily exit the Sisyphean logic that dominates the activities concerned with sustaining mere life. It also offers humans the hope that finite individuals and groups can attain immortality. Finally, natality, as a rupture of that which is, promises a steady stream of new beginnings. What all this suggests is that Arendt cannot be said to follow or even tacitly accept the authentic-inauthentic dichotomy. And given that these categories are the hallmark of existentialism from Kierkegaard onwards, Arendt’s rejection of them calls into question the reading that views Arendt as politicizing the authenticity–inauthenticity distinction.

But to the above one could respond that while it is true that the public realm is initially presented by Heidegger as the realm of the inauthentic, this is not the case in all his writings. In The Origin of the Work of Art, for example, his examination of the question of what characterizes and differentiates works of art from other objects, Heidegger suggests that the answer lies in the fact that the work of art ‘opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in force.’ ⁶⁵ If this conception of the work of art is combined with Heidegger’s other statement about the polis being a place of disclosure, then we seem to have arrived at Arendt’s performative understanding of politics that views the political as the site of true disclosure. ⁶⁶ The case on the face of it seems plausible; however, it does not stand up to scrutiny, for at least two reasons.

First, in The Origins of the Work of Art, Heidegger does not make an explicit distinction between the performative arts and the plastic arts. Indeed, he moves seamlessly from the one to the other, attributing to both the same primary disclosive quality. Just as the Greek temple discloses, the words of the tragedy disclose the battle, the battle is in fact being fought on stage. ⁶⁷ For Arendt, on the other hand, the distinction between the plastic arts and performative arts is critical. Action for Arendt falls into the latter class. Where Heidegger fails to make this critical distinction, Arendt credits Machiavelli with an awareness of this distinction. This leads to the second difference with Heidegger. While Heidegger does speak of politics in terms of the arts, he does so in a register that is in complete disharmony with what we find in Arendt. Politics for Heidegger is a form of poiesis. The fabrication model therefore finds its way into Heidegger’s theorizing, even when he seems closest to Arendt. Arendt’s choice of the model of the performative arts over the plastic arts is aimed at avoiding the consequences that follow from using the latter model. The analogy with the plastic arts not only allows one to posit a single maker behind the plastic object, but also makes violence an acceptable part of the process (as Heidegger’s discussion in the Introduction to Metaphysics makes clear). ⁶⁸ In siding with the performative model and offering a criticism of the fabrication model Arendt is doing far more than differentiating herself from Heidegger. Heidegger’s use of the fabrication model is for Arendt a reflection of the fact that his thinking is continuous with the tradition of Western political philosophy; viewing politics through the model of the plastic arts and thereby favoring the fabrication model in politics is a fault that Arendt traces back to Plato. Heidegger therefore fails to break free from the tradition on this count. That this is Arendt’s verdict on Heidegger becomes even more evident when we turn to Arendt’s essays on existenz philosophy.

Arendt on existenz philosophy

Given the attention that has been paid in the literature to Heidegger’s influence on Arendt, it is surprising how little Arendt herself published on Heidegger and existenz philosophy. There are, however, two important exceptions to this, her essay ‘What is existenz philosophy?’ and her APSA address ‘Concern with Politics in recent European Philosophy.’ While the former essay has often been considered too political and therefore not necessarily representative of Arendt’s true evaluation of Heidegger’s philosophy – particularly given her changed evaluation in her essay ‘Concern with Politics’ delivered some eight years later – the criticism offered seems far too exhaustive to be taken as simply occasioned by the political situation of the time. ⁶⁹ Distinguishing existentialism and existenz philosophy, Arendt understands the latter as being concerned primarily with the ‘being of man.’ ⁷⁰ In tracing the development of existenz philosophy, Arendt begins with Kant and ends with Karl Jaspers. She contests the view that modern philosophy since Nietzsche has been involved in a decentering of the subject, a point she illustrates through her evaluation of phenomenology. ⁷¹ She seems far more positive about existenz philosophy, because it attempts ‘to come to terms with the fact that man is not the creator of the world.’ ⁷² But this effort too fails by Arendt’s reckoning. Taking three main representatives of existenz philosophy (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Jaspers) Arendt launches a critique of existenz philosophy that focuses on the solipsism that characterizes this type of philosophy. Existenz philosophy’s equation of existence and essence assigns to humans an attribute traditionally reserved for God and therefore falls prey to the hubris that characterizes much of Western philosophy, a hubris that manifests itself in the effort to make humans ‘the masters of being.’

The above, though a particularly damning critique, does not apply to Heidegger, since the primary task of Division I of Being and Time is neither to show humans’ mastery over being, nor their ability to recede into the theoretical life, but rather to show the extent to which Dasein is rooted in the world. Arendt recognizes this, writing that Heidegger’s philosophy is ‘the first absolutely and uncompromisingly this-worldly philosophy,’ yet she ultimately sees him as hostile to this fact. ⁷³ Indeed, in ‘Concern with Politics in Recent European Philosophy’ Arendt credits Heidegger with two positive contributions. First, Heidegger’s thought ushers in the abandonment of all absolutes. This abandonment has an important repercussion for thinking about politics, since the rejection of absolutes also means ‘the abandonment of the position of the ‘wise man’ by the philosopher,’ thus opening the way to a consideration of politics from the viewpoint of ‘human experience.’ ⁷⁴ But there is a second theoretical insight that Arendt suggests offers a way out of the difficulty that plagues the entire tradition of philosophy from Plato onwards. The problem is one of ignoring the central feature of politics – it deals not with ‘man’ but with ‘men…in the plural.’ ⁷⁵ Arendt considers Heidegger as offering a possible solution to this problem. She writes, ‘it may be – but I shall only hint at this – that Heidegger’s concept of ‘world,’ which in many respects stands at the center of his philosophy, constitutes a step out of this difficulty. At any rate, because Heidegger defines humans existence as being-in-the-world, he insists on giving philosophic significance to structures of everyday life that are completely incomprehensible if man is not primarily understood as being together with others.’ ⁷⁶ Arendt, however, detects a certain hostility to this recognition in Heidegger’s own writings.

The first sign of this hostility is that for Heidegger, being-in-the-world is a mode of fallenness. ⁷⁷ Dasein lost in the ‘they’ leads to inauthentic existence, one in which it does not face up to its facticity and thrownness. Instead, one carries on in an unthinking manner, lost in the ‘they.’ It is here that Heidegger makes a move that requires an escape from the world and an inward turn. It is only in facing one’s death that authentic existence is made possible. ⁷⁸ Authentic existence thus only becomes possible in escaping what Heidegger himself recognizes as the fundamental condition of Dasein. Thus, Arendt writes ‘In Heidegger this arrogant passion to will to be a Self has contradicted itself; for never before was it so clear as in his philosophy that this is probably the one being which Man cannot be.’ ⁷⁹ Heidegger’s recognition of the worldliness of Dasein comes, in Arendt’s view, with a strong sense that this condition needs to be escaped or transformed.

While Arendt may be right to attribute to Heidegger both the recognition of the situatedness of the subject and the desire to escape into the self, Heidegger’s account does not end with the inward turn. The inward turn required to face up to one’s death and the silence necessary to hear the voice of conscience are aimed at ensuring an authentic existence. Since Heidegger has already established that Dasein is always in the world, this authentic existence does not entail a falling back into the self, but rather an authentic way of being-one-self. Authentic being-one-self requires grasping the possibilities that are available to us and then making a choice among them. ⁸⁰ This choice is made with the awareness that the possibilities available to us are determined by our particular time and culture. Heidegger terms making a self-aware choice from among the possibilities available ‘resoluteness.’ Resoluteness therefore does not involve an inward turn, nor does it call for an escape from the ‘they.’ All this suggests that to focus on Heidegger’s solipsism is to fail to take into account the whole movement from everyday fallenness to authentic being-one-self. While it is true that there is a solipsistic moment in Heidegger’s thought, the final aim is not the inward turn but an authentic being-one-self. The latter does not involve an escape from the ‘they,’ but rather a different comportment to the ‘they.’ ⁸¹ But if Heidegger’s understanding of resoluteness puts into question Arendt’s charge of solipsism, her criticism can still stand for she also finds fault with resoluteness.

While Arendt charges Western Philosophy with the hubristic drive to put humans in the position of God, by making them ‘masters of being,’ she also detects an opposed pathos characterizing much of philosophy since Kant. She writes, ‘since Kant, every philosophy maintains an element of defiance on the one hand, and an open or concealed concept of fate, on the other.’ ⁸² Arendt reads Heidegger’s resoluteness as symptomatic of this latter pathos, one characterized by the acceptance of necessity. Heidegger’s resoluteness by this reading is a heroic embrace of fate. The trouble with this acceptance is that, while it is unlike the alternate mood that puts humans in the place of God and refuses to accept contingency, it leads to equating freedom with an acceptance of necessity. Therefore, for Arendt even if resoluteness offers a corrective to the previous solipsistic move, it does so at the price of giving up ‘human freedom and dignity,’ by prescribing an acceptance of fate. ⁸³

Arendt also offers a criticism of the more political understanding of authentic being-in-the-world. If resoluteness is recognition of the choices available to Dasein, and these in turn are determined by the world Dasein inhabits, then the sphere of choice is circumscribed by possibilities determined by the world it inhabits. Heidegger gives concrete expression to this worldly dimension of Dasein’s existence with his talk of collective Dasein. ⁸⁴ Arendt reads this as Heidegger’s effort to offer a corrective to his earlier move (with being-towards-death) that calls for a radical separation from the world and an inward turn. But Arendt dismisses this corrective as introducing ‘mythologizing confusions [such] as Folk and Earth.’ These for Arendt ‘lead one only out of philosophy into some naturalistic superstition.’ ⁸⁵ While this move to a collective understanding of Dasein is articulated in Heidegger’s later essays, we find that even in Being and Time Heidegger writes of resoluteness as requiring an embrace of that which is handed down by one’s heritage. ⁸⁶ For Arendt then, Heidegger first theorizes a worldly subject, then calls on the subject to retreat into the self. And even when the retreat into the self is presented as simply preparatory to acting in an authentic manner as a worldly subject, the subject is so situated as to only have the option to embrace fate.

Conclusion

Recognizing that Arendt is not simply involved in an ‘agonistic appropriation’ of Heidegger or ‘think[ing] against’ Heidegger brings to the fore the originality of her thought. Arendt views the failure of Heidegger’s philosophy as continuous with those that affect the tradition of Western philosophy. For Arendt, Heidegger’s philosophy has moments informed by the two moods that characterize Western philosophy. Heidegger’s Promethean moment comes when he, in Arendt’s reading, makes humans the masters of being, while his understanding of resoluteness represents his embrace of fate. Arendt’s political thought aims to put together these two moods. She recognizes the agency of humans, depicting them as creators, shapers, and maintainers of their world, but at the same time recognizes that individuals enjoy only limited sovereignty, for once their words and deeds go out into the world they are no longer in control of them. In combining these attitudes, Arendt is not thinking against Heidegger or appropriating him agonistically, but instead is responding to the tradition of Western philosophic thought. Even in her response to the Western tradition her attitude differs from that of Heidegger. Nietzsche in his condemnation of the Western tradition of philosophy, places himself at the end, and when Heidegger does the same he portrays Nietzsche as the culmination of the tradition and as having himself succeeded where Nietzsche failed. Arendt, on the other hand, while following Heidegger’s judgment on Nietzsche and viewing the former as the product of the Western tradition, portrays herself as outside it not from the perch of a philosopher looking back, but from one whose concerns are far too worldly to be counted among those of philosophers. Her concern for the world – for the political – cannot be explained through Heidegger’s influence on her thought.

The effort to distance Arendt from Heidegger, while revealing the closeness of the connection between Machiavelli and Arendt, leads us to draw a far more accurate genealogy of Arendt’s political thought than is found in the current literature. While admittedly Machiavelli’s influence has not been completely ignored by Arendt scholars, the extent of influence has not been well documented. Giving this connection the requisite attention reveals that what are considered some of Arendt’s most original contributions to political thought emerge from her engagement with Machiavelli. The importance of this recognition, however, extends beyond simply ‘getting Arendt right.’ The republicanism that emerges from Arendt’s engagement with Machiavelli reveals to us aspects of the republican tradition that are not often highlighted.

The republican elements in Arendt’s thought have been said to come to the fore most clearly in her recognition of the ‘nature and prerequisites of…a space of freedom,’ and her agreement with Machiavelli on the insufficiency of personal morality in politics. ⁸⁷ The intellectual genealogy charted out in this article, brings to the fore at least two other features of her thought that are not often associated with Arendt’s republicanism, nor with republicanism in general. Arendt’s reading of Machiavelli suggests that the performative model of political action finds an articulation in the republican tradition. This is of course not to say that Arendt simply lifts the model from the republican tradition, but rather to suggest that even as she develops the performative model beyond what is found in the republican tradition, she shares a core insight with the republican tradition. Thus, on Arendt’s reading Machiavelli turns out to be far more than a thinker of raison d’état. In the differing answers that Machiavelli offers to the question of the ends of politics at various points of his writings, Arendt detects that he comes closer than any other writer in the tradition to the position of the self-containedness of politics. Far from seeing this as a fault, Arendt makes this the hallmark of her thinking on politics. Thus, Arendt’s performative understanding of politics and her insistence on its autonomy have a republican provenance.

The second feature of republicanism emerges from Arendt’s treatment of the question of violence in Machiavelli. Arendt is clear that her agonistic understanding of politics does not countenance violence. However, as we have noted, the experience of totalitarianism highlighted for her the fact that violence – even if considered pre-political – is sometimes necessitated in order to ensure the continued existence of the political sphere. In Machiavelli then, Arendt has an ally who understands the necessity of recourse to extraordinary modes. Arendt’s simultaneous reluctance to admit violence and her admission of its necessity reflects a cognizance of the tragic dimension of politics that is characteristic of republican thought.