[Suzanne Duvall Jacobitti] Lo Publico, Lo Privadi y Lo Moral

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The Public, the Private, the Moral: Hannah Arendt and Political MoralityAuthor(s): Suzanne Duvall JacobittiSource: International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique, Vol.12, No. 4, The Public and the Private/Le Public et le privé (Oct., 1991), pp. 281-293Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1601466 .

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International olitical ScienceReview 1991), Vol. 12, No. 4, 281-293

The Public, the Private, the Moral: HannahArendt and Political Morality

SUZANNE DUVALL JACOBITTI

ABSTRACT.lthough Hannah Arendt never published a book on politicalmorality, she did in the later years of her life think a great deal about thestatus of morality in a post-Nietzschean era and the implications of this for

politics. Evidence can be found both in her published works and in someof her unpublished lecture notes. Arendt struggled toward, though never

quite reached, an understanding in which politics is moderated bynonabsolutist moral principles and in which the entire range of human

relationships is united by friendship and respect for others, providing both

public and private life with a moral basis.

In the wake of writing EichmanninJerusalemand facing the storm of controversy that

followed its publication, Hannah Arendt turned her attention to questions of moralityand politics. Her biographer, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, reports that Arendt

acquiesced in the suggestion of a correspondent that the book on Eichmann had been

a "groundwork" for a "political morals." While Arendt never published a treatise on

political morality-and indeed, I believe, never resolved to her own satisfaction the

issues with which she wrestled-we do have the results of some of these struggles,some in asides in her published works and some in her unpublished papers.'

Among the latter are sets of notes for two courses dealing with morality: a lecturecourse given at the New School for Social Research in 1965, entitled "Some Questionsof Moral Philosophy," and a seminar given in 1966 at the University of Chicagoentitled "Basic Moral Propositions."2 In these courses, Arendt focussed squarely on

the question of the status of morality in a post-Nietzschean era and its implicationsfor politics.

Although Arendt did not reach conclusive results in these inquiries, reading them

does shed light on some unresolved difficulties in her published works. She has been

severely criticized for her impoverished portrait of life in the private realm (i.e.,outside politics) as well as for portraying the political realm as empty of purpose and

unlimited by moral standards.3 When one reads what she says about these matters,

in light of her struggle with the question of political morality, in the morality lectures,one can see a somewhat different and more attractive picture of both the public and

the private. Arendt was struggling toward, and never quite reached, an understand-

0192-5121/91/04 281-13 ? 1991 International Political Science Association



HannahArendt ndPoliticalMorality

ing in which the entire range of human relationshipswas united by friendshipand

respect for others, which provide both public and private life with a moral basis.If this analysis is correct, then these conclusions should be of interest not only to

students of Arendt, but also to the many political theorists who have beenpreoccupiedin recentyearswith the problemof moralityand politics.This discussionhas occurred largely in the context of the debate between liberals and their"communitarian"critics, in which liberalism is criticized for lacking an adequateaccount of the good life and of moral virtue. Most modern liberal theory has rested

upon a claim of neutrality in these matters, a claim based either upon moral

scepticism (i.e. that it is impossible to defend accounts of the good) or upon the

principle that individuals have the right to determine on their own what the good is

and to pursue it in their own way, freefrom any political interferenceexcept what is

necessary to defend the equal ability of all to pursue that right.4Against this, it has been argued that the liberal state cannot be satisfactorily

justified without a theory of the good; that it is impossible in practice for the liberalstate to be neutral among various versions of the good life; and (perhaps most

compelling) that a liberal state cannot survive if its citizens lack moral virtue, that

is, if they are not constrained by some moral limits on the pursuit of individual

desires, rights-claims, and visions of the good.5 To claim otherwise is, after all, to

counter the wisdom of the ages from Plato to Tocqueville that morality,and religiousbeliefs as well, are essential to political stability.

The difficultyis, of course-and communitarianshave no effectiverebuttal to it-

that if one claims to know the good or if one insists that political stability requiresvirtuous citizens, this would seem tojustify an active state role in moral and perhaps

religious education and other, perhaps extensive, limitations on individual libertyand rights. So the dilemma seems to be that a free society can survive neither with

nor without an account of the good and moral virtue.

As political thinkers try to work themselves out of this dilemma, they should, for

at least two reasons, find pertinentArendt'sstrugglesto develop a political morality.First, the morality she was seeking was not to be based on any claim of absolute

knowledge of the good but instead rested on respect for different points of view.

Second, by preserving a balance between the claims of public and of private life, it

would find a middle ground between the liberal tendency to reduce everything to

individual interests or rights and the communitarian danger of subordinating the

individual to the demands of community or civic life.

The Modern Challenge to Morality

Arendt took very seriously the possibility that moral philosophy may be impossiblein the modern world. She began with the challenge posed by cultural relativism and

by the Nietzschean claim that, with the "death of God," all traditionalmoralitydies

as well. Arendt accepted Nietzsche's view that the entire Western moral tradition

from Plato on is dead beyond recovery. One needs, however, to be specific aboutwhat this tradition was for Arendt and hence what she believed died with it. Both

Platonic and Christian philosophy, according to Arendt, were characterized by a

belief in the existence of transcendent truthsknown toa

privilegedfew

forwhom the

experience of these truths was compelling (either because of a vision beheld by the

"eye of the mind" or a voice heard by "ear" of conscience).6For the many who did

not experience truth in this way, and hence would doubt, the truth must be imposed

by the few as external standards guiding conduct and must be reinforced by the belief

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SUZANNE DUVALLJACOBITTI

in eternal rewards and punishments (1965b: 024631).Arendt maintained that it was probably Plato who invented this myth of rewards

and punishments in the afterlife, but that the myth was adopted by the Christian

Church at the end of the Roman Era and became part of the "trinity of religion,authority, and tradition" which buttressed the Church's power throughout the

Middle Ages (1977: 109-111, 125-132).7 This trinity began to break down in the

early modern age with Luther, the scientific revolution, and Cartesian doubt. The

dying process was long but inevitable. Nietzsche only drew the logical consequenceswhen he pronounced the death of God and of all existing European morality. But it

was not until the twentieth century, Arendt said, that belief in an afterlife died out

among the bulk of the population in Western countries. From this time on, in her

view, the traditional Graeco-Judeo-Christian idea of morality as transcendentstandards against which human conduct should be measured was effectively dead.8

This may, Arendt suggested, seem to leave us with only "morality" in its

etymological sense of "mores"-the customs, manners, and habits which moldbehavior in every society and which, of course, are relative to time and place. Modern

conservative thinkers from Burke on have been careful to preserve such morality for,however indefensible it may be in logical terms, it is all that protects us from

savagery. And indeed, contemporary communitarians seem sometimes to simply

encourage the retention and inculcation of traditional values.Arendt had little patience with this approach. While she did not try to tear such

values down and did not deny that they might preserve a veneer of civility in normal

times, she found them of no use in protecting against the extreme evil of modern

totalitarian movements. At best, the traditional moral standards became empty

cliches which shielded people against reality. At worst, they were simply jettisonedand replaced by the moral codes of the Nazis. This was in fact what struck Arendt

most: that once moral standards were understood to be simply "values" (i.e., goodbecause people valued them) and not backed by transcendent principles or divine

sanction, they were as easily interchanged as money. What people get used to is

simply having rules or "values," the content of which makes little difference. In fact,bohemians were far more likely to object to Nazism, she believed, than were

respectable, bourgeois defenders of "morality" (1965b: 024583f; 1978 I: 177).Arendt began her New School lectures with a quotation from Winston Churchill

in the 1930s to the effect that all the permanencies he had been brought up to believein had not lasted; everything he had been taught was impossible had happened. This

to her was the basic moral experience of the twentieth century. That respectablebourgeois Germans had been able to switch to Nazi moral standards in the 1930s

and back again after the war was understandable only in terms of the basic

exchangeability of moral principles once they become reduced to mere "values"

(1965b: 024585f; 1978 I: 177).

Basic Moral Propositions

If neither transcendent standards nor traditional mores provide us sufficient

significant moral guidance, then, Arendt concluded, life must be lived "without a

banister,"without the benefit of moral absolutes to hold on to (1979: 336-337). Still,the absence of transcendent absolutes did not necessarily mean the absence of moral

experience; it did not belie the fact that people past and present do make mbral

choices and may have defensible (though not absolute) grounds for making them.

Arendt turned her inquiry to the past to see if there were to be found either in the

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reported experiences of those who had made difficult moral choices or in

philosophical and literary writings any clues to a secular, nontranscendentgroundfor moral action.

As a startingpoint, there was the undeniablefact that there had been individuals

who-though they did not necessarilybelieve in transcendentprinciplesand thoughthe pressure of social mores was clearly against them-refused to go along withNazism and Stalinism. This seemed to Arendt a moral phenomenon worth

investigating.What underlay this refusal?9Two things struck Arendt about this: first, that there was no way to predictwhat

sort of person would refuse-examples were to be found among all classes,educational levels, religions,and occupations.Thus, it seemed that there might be a

capacity to act morally, to tell right from wrong, in all humans. Second, those whorefused did not, Arendt claimed, typically appeal to transcendent moral laws or

religious commandments, but rather turned to an inner standard of judgment. For

Arendt, the propositionthat best summarizes their responseis that of not being ableto live with one's past action (1966: 024533). Arendt identified this sort of refusal tocollaboratein evil with the activity of thinking, in a very special sense of that term,as we shall see.l?

This modern experience of refusal to acquiesce in evil has, Arendt suggested, a

counterpart n the Western moral and religioustradition. If one combs this traditionfor moral principleswhich were not thought to rest upon transcendent standards ordivine commandments-that is, for principles which it was thought all humansshould be able to grasp with mere reason-one encounterswhat Arendt calls "basicmoral propositions"such as "Don't do unto others what you don't want done to

yourself'; or "Love thy neighbor as thyself'; or Kant's "Act in such a way that the

maxim of one's action can be universal law" (i.e., do not make an exception foryourself) or Socrates' "It is better to sufferwrong than to do wrong" (1965b:024586,

024593).These basic moral propositions, she argued, have two noteworthyfeatures. First,

they seem to be dictatesof reason,but they cannot be proven. If one asks,why shouldI take the moral point of view, why should I love my neighbor as myself or sufferrather than do evil, reason has no satisfactory answer (1965b: 024566, 024564).Second, each of these propositions appeals back to the self, to what is good for theself-which seems paradoxical in light of the common view that the essence of

morality is unselfishness and that self-love is sinful (1965b: 024586)."

To Arendt, it was Socrates who best understood the nature of these basic moralpropositions. In the GorgiasSocrates is shown presenting the claim that it is betterto suffer than to do evil (along with two other similar claims: that it is better for anevildoer that he be punished than to go unpunished, and that the tyrant who doeswhat he pleases with impunity is unhappy). All these propositionswere strikinglyatodds with common Athenianopinion;and Socratesis unable to persuadehis hearersof their truth, just as in the first book of the Republic,he is unable to provideconvincing arguments that one should be just even if one can get away with beingunjust (1965b: 024597f; 1978 I: 180-182). In other words, he has to live with himselfand does not want to live in such intimacy with a criminal (1965b: 024612f; 1978 I:

180-182, 187-188).

To Socrates, Arendt claimed, this is as far as one can go in justifying personalmorality. As she put it, "moralityconcerns the individual in his singularity,and thecriterionof rightand wrong, the answer to the question:What ought I to do, dependsin the last analysis neither on the habits and customs, which I share with those

284




around me, nor on a Command of either divine or human origin, but on what I

decide with regard to myself" (1965b: 024598). This is thebasic (and only secular)moral proposition to be derived from the Western tradition and the only place we

can begin, now that traditional morality is gone. Quoting her again: "Now today,with the breakdown of religious authority, the test is whether we are mature enoughto go back and understand the real reason for not doing wrong ... [namely] that itis better to sufferwrong than to do wrong, that it is impossible to live with a criminal,

especially if he happens to be you."12Here, then, is the result of Arendt's preliminary mining of Western experience for

a secular basis for moral conduct. We have a hypothetical imperative: if I want tobe able to live with myself, there are some things I must not do. But what these

things are and whether I want to live with myself are entirely up to me. This seemsto have been tacitly recognized, Arendt suggested, by major thinkersthroughout the

tradition.13Life, indeed, must be lived without a banister.

Thinking and Morality

To Arendt, this conclusion was disappointingly subjective. It did, however, have

some interesting consequences. For one thing, it explains why all the secular basicmoral propositions seem to appeal back to self-interest. The reason Socrates does not

want to be in disharmony with himself, Arendt argued, is that if he is in disharmony,he cannot think. Thus, this most basic of moral propositions is in the self-interestof

the thinker (1965b: 024600). To be clear what she meant by this, one must be clearabout her definition of "thinking,"for this is certainly not a claim that philosophers

are more prone to moral conduct than others. To think, as Arendt defined it, involvesstopping from one's activities in the world and asking "Why am I doing this?" or"What is the meaning of what we are doing?" Thinking is, thus, something that can

be done by anybody. It is not a specialized activity best engaged in by professionals,nor does it involve the turning of the soul to contemplate eternal or divine essences;nor is it logical calculation of consequences nor the scientific quest for knowledge.Rather, it arises out of the most mundane everyday occurrences, especially thingsone has done oneself.14In other words, thinkingis an inquiry into human experience,including our customary practices and moral claims and the language we use to talk

about them.

Among the many activities in which humans engage, Arendt said, only thinking

requires internal harmony. When one is busy in the world, occupied with otherpeople, or fully engaged in some productive or laborious activity, one need not worryabout being with oneself. To think, however, is to engage in dialogue with oneself-and this is only possible if one is friends with oneself (1965b: 024614f).

The proposition that one ought not to be in disharmony with oneself is a

hypothetical imperative for anyone who wants to think. However, Arendt said it is

not, despite its self-centeredness and subjectivity, entirely devoid of moral effect.

Indeed, Arendt claimed that thinking did provide some limits against evildoing, not

only because there are some things a thinking person will not want to live with but

also because simply stopping to think means that one inquires into the reasons or

justificationsfor what one is

beingasked to

do,which at least

preventsone from

mindlessly going along with the current. In a world in which the greatest dangersmay be mindless bureaucrats obeying orders and thoughtless conformism in society

(which Arendt implied in writing of the "banalityof evil"), this is not an insignificantmoral function (1965a).

285




Still, this does not take us very far, as Arendt was well aware. Not only is the

judgment of whom or what one can live with entirely subjective, and not only doesit apply only to those who care to be thinking persons, the concern is still only with

the self. Itimplies

neitherresponsibility

toward other individuals norresponsibilityto take public action to correct wrongs which exist in the world. One who follows

the hypothetical imperative of the thinker leaves the responsibilityfor the securityand welfareof the world to others (1965b: 024594).15

This was Arendt's verdict on Socrates. Socrates believed, Arendt said, that his

thinkingand examining activities were beneficial to Athens, but this was not why he

engaged in them. He would never have given them up, whatever their effect onAthens (1965b:024603). This was the basis of Arendt's claim that Socrates'case wasirrelevantto the issue of civil disobedience.16 The civil disobedient, she claimed, actsfor a public purpose, not for the sake of her or his own conscience (1969: 58-64).From the perspective of the world, there may be more to be said for Callicles'

viewpoint in the Gorgias-that since in this world one must do wrong or sufferit, thesensible person had betterdo it-than for Socrates'responsethat forthe sake of one'sown internal harmony, one had better suffer wrong (1978 I: 182). It was in thiscontext that Arendt introduced Machiavelli as a moral thinker, because, she claimed,he was the only one who took seriously the fact that in this world if you do not doevil to resist evil, "then the evildoers will do as they please" (1982:50). Machiavelli,she argued, was alone in the secular tradition in advocating positive action and he

recognized that you cannot act in the world and avoid sometimes doing what you

might not like living with later. Unlike either Callicles or Socrates, however,Machiavelli said, as Arendt was fond of repeating, that he would sacrifice his own

soul for the sake of his country (1965b: 024596; 1969:61).Now when Arendt turned to Machiavelli, opposing his "citizen" perspective to

various "private,""selfish"perspectives (concern for eternal salvation, for Socratic

inner harmony, or for material "happiness"),she approacheddangerousground. It

is in such contexts that she made some of the "reckless"commentsabout politics that

lend credence to claims that her position is empty radicalism or politicalromanticism-as when she said that political action cannot be judged by moralstandards and that the only criterion for political action is greatness; and that

accomplishment in politics is only virtuosity of performance.17In making such

claims, Arendt encouragedserious misunderstandingof her work.

Public, Private, Moral

Although Arendt did praise Machiavelli and public life in exaggeratedterms, it was

never her view that one should sacrifice the private self to the civic self nor did she

ever deny all value to private life or envision a politics unlimitedby moralprinciples.It is true that Arendt painted a very bleak picture of the private household in much

of her writing and contrasted this with an image of the public realm as bright,shining, and heroic. But one should not take these images too literally. It was partof Arendt's method of writing to find exemplarycases (or ideal types) and use them

to draw us away from traditional concepts which block us from seeing new

experiences clearly (from thinking what we are doing) (1978 I: 169; 1982: 76-77;

1958: 193-194). We should understand her public/private dichotomy in that sense.Real households, as she was well aware, are not entirely dark or entirely devoted to

the necessities of life any more than real politics (even in ancient Greece) are brightand shining and free of necessity. These images were important to Arendt to shake

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SUZANNEDUVALLJACOBITTI

us free of contemporary intellectual blinkers that prevent us from seeing the real

dangers posed by modern society and totalitarianism.

She herself did not accept these images uncritically and was not hostile to the

private sphere. After all, thinking occurs in private, not in public; and thinking, aswe have seen, was an essential deterrent for Arendt to that banal sort of evil which

is an ever-present threat to modern society.18 Nor was politics free of all moral

restraints.One can pull together from Arendt's various works a more complete and satisfying

account of political morality and of the relation between public and private than sheever worked out explicitly. This "nonwritten political morality"19consists, first, of

an account of moral constraints on politics and, second, of an account of friendshipas the virtue or relationship which mediates between the public and private spheres.

At various points in her work, Arendt argued that there are moral principlesinherent in the very nature of politics. In TheHumanConditionhe identified two moral

principles which she said emerge from the activity of politics itself: the keeping ofpromises and the forgivingof transgressions.Promising-the making of commitments

to others and then keeping them-is the central, stabilizing institution of politics and

indeed of all human relationships for Arendt. Forgiving is essential because of the

unpredictability of human affairs; it releases us from an otherwise endless chain

reaction of revenge and hatred (1958: 236-247; 1969:92-93).20 In fact, she criticized

ancient Greek politics-the model, in other respects, for her image of the political-for remaining "untouched by the predicament of unpredictability"and for lacking a

concept of forgiveness (1958: 194, 239).Arendt also believed that moderation and courage were intrinsically linked to

politics. Courage was an essential ingredient of action because to act with othersin

the world is to initiate and to incur responsibilities for processes one cannot control.

It also involves exposing oneself to the glare of the public eye, when one might have

stayed safely at home. To act, therefore,requires the courage to stick one's neck out,to emerge from the anonymity and security of private life and risk unknown

consequences (1958: 35-36).More important here, Arendt claimed that, as she put it, "the old virtue of

moderation, of keeping within bounds, is indeed one of the political virtues parexcellence; just as the political temptation par excellence is indeed hubris" (1958:191).21This is certainly not the voice of someone who sees no limitations on politicalaction. It is precisely this fear of hubris that caused Arendt to oppose action based

on moral absolutes, such as the Rights of Man, which was the basis of much of hercriticism of the French Revolution (1963: 79, 104). In addition, her belief in

moderation led her to distrust efforts to attempt to "do good works" in politics, to

act on behalf of others.22This is to assume that one knows what no human can know:

first, what is best for another person and second, how things will turn out when one

acts in this unpredictable world. For Arendt, to take responsibility for the good of

others, to act for rather than with them, is inherently hubristic, immoderate.

Furthermore, it turns other people into objects.23Political action involves and must

involve respect for the other with whom one acts and a willingness to consider and

talk about the other's point of view. This is to acknowledge what Arendt called the

pluralityof the human condition, which is, for her,

probablythe most fundamental

moral limitation on politics (1958: 175-176).Arendt linked this idea of respect for others with the Aristotelian virtue of

friendship. "Respect,"Arendt said, "not unlike the Aristotelianphiliapolitike,s a kindof 'friendship' without intimacy and without closeness; it is a regard for the person

287




from the distance which the space of the world puts between us" (1958: 243). Like

Aristotle's friendship, Arendt's friendship is a virtue that belongs in different waysto both political and private spheres, providing some common ground between them.

One mustemphasize that,

when Arendtspoke

offriendship,

she did not mean

brotherhood or intimacy or mutual interdependence, but rather the respectful,

engaged interaction-essentially in conversation-of equal but different individuals.

By contrast, a sense of brotherhood springs up among people in situations of

extremity, among people who are the same in their human need, as occurs amongthose in extreme poverty, or among refugees or among victims of disaster (1968: 12-

17). The desire for intimacy appears as rebellion against society's pressure to

conform, a pressure which threatens to eradicate private spaces, leading people to

an excessive concern with their personal sentiments. The desire to share intimacies

replaces genuine friendship (1958: 38-39). Arendt worried that in "dark times" like

our own, there is such a need for intimacy that people huddle with those like

themselves, fearful of conflict, perhaps tolerating those with different viewpoints butnever really listening to them or engaging them in conversation. Instead, "peopleavoid disputes and try as far as possible to deal only with people with whom theycannot come into conflict" (1968: 30-31).

What is characteristic of friendship, in contrast, is an openness to other viewpoints,a genuine discourse among people who think differently. Such conversation-whether

it is among friends or political actors-opens up a space which both separates and

unites the participants, just as a table we sit around separates and unites us. Such

spaces, for Arendt, constitute a human "world" which disappears if society or

necessity press us too closely together (1958: 52-53). Describing G.E. Lessing's view

of

friendship

and

politics,

Arendt said that human discourse "belongs to an area in

which there are many voices and where the announcement of what each 'deems truth'

both links and separates men, establishing in fact those distances between men which

together comprise the world." If ever these victims were to merge into a single

opinion, then "the world, which can only form in the interspaces between men in all

their variety, would vanish altogether" (1968: 30-31). Such homogenization would

be as fatal to politics as it is to friendship; for "the reality of the public realm relies

on the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects in which the

common world presents itself" (1958: 57).Such homogenization would also be fatal to thinking (in Arendt's sense of that

concept); for friendship in her view is also a precondition for thinking. While she did

not spell it out explicitly, one might present her argument as a response to a Kantiantype of question: What are the conditions of the possibility of thinking? The responsewould proceed as follows: thinking, the internal dialogue with oneself, presupposes

speech-that is conversation. Conversation clearly presupposes another person with

whom to converse. The "guiding experience" here, Arendt suggested, is "friendshipand not selfhood; I first talk with others before I talk with myself, examining whatever

the joint talk may have been about, and then discover that I can conduct a dialoguenot only with others but with myself as well" (1978 I: 189; 1968: 84-85). And this

talk with others which precedes thinking presupposes that one respects the

"otherness," the difference of that partner in conversation.

Thinking as internal dialogue with oneself, respect for the other, friendship,

plurality-these constituted for Arendt a cluster of inseparable concepts. To think islike conversing with a friend; to converse with a friend is like having another self

(1978 I: 189). It was, after all, conversing that Socrates, Arendt's model thinker,refused to give up for Athens; he could have thought in silence (1966: 028617). The

288




true thinker constantly broadens the circle of partners in conversation, just as

Socrates indicated he would wish to do even in an afterlife (1963: 128). Thus, Arendt

concluded that the "inherent duality [of Socratic thought] points to the infinite

plurality which is the law of the earth" (1978: 187).24The plurality, the "space of the world," sustained by friendship and mutual

respect, is what preserves the balance, in Arendt's thought, between public and

private. Whereas the private individual (including the thinker) cares for personalinterest and the citizen cares for country, Arendt would balance both perspectiveswith care for "the world," which is neither self nor other but the space between, a

space which will only exist as long as thinking friends or colleagues in political actionexist.

Friendship understood in this way, then, humanizes both the public and private

spheres. The claims of country on individual are always limited by the understandingthat a country which does not preserve plurality, public spaces, has no claims at all

(except, if it is one's own country, to cause regret). Friendship also-and this is oftenmissed by readers of Arendt-humanizes the household. Friendship can exist in the

household between man and wife-as it certainly did between Arendt and her

husband Heinrich Blucher and between KarlJaspers and his wife, of whose marriageArendt said, "If two people do not succumb to the illusion that the ties binding them

have made them one, they can create a world anew between them" (1968: 78).25 It

also can exist to an extent among parents and children;for as soon as a child is born

to lovers, Arendt insisted, a space is created between them and they take on the

responsibility to prepare the child notjust for survival but to live as a thinking, acting

person in "the world" (1958: 242). The criticism Arendt had of the ancient household

(andof the modern

societywhich

incorporatesits worst features) is not that it is

private but that there is too little space among persons, too little opportunity for

different points of view and for respect among equals. To the extent such things donot exist within the household, to that extent the household is impoverished.26

For Arendt, then, a fully human life requires the existence of both public and

private spheres. Such spheres certainly require legal protection, she believed. Law

should guarantee a right to private property (not necessarily to pursue wealth, but

certainly to have a physical place of one's own to which to retreat) and basic rightsof citizenship (1958: 70-72).27 The tragedy of political refugees-the homeless

peoples of the twentieth century-is that they had neither public nor private spacesand hence were deprived of the plurality of the human condition. For this reason,

Arendt regarded the right to have rights, to be a citizen of some country, as possiblythe only human right (1951: 290-302).

But legal protection is not enough. Also essential is that a widely shared

commitment to certain political "virtues" exist if the intangible spaces among peopleare to be maintained and a boundary between public and private protected.

Individuals must have the courage at times to act and must respect the commitments

or promises to others that action entails. They must also avoid immoderate, hubristic

assumptions about what can be achieved through action and must be willing to

forgive unanticipated consequences. Above all, individuals must respect human

plurality, the uniqueness of every other human being, and cultivate friendship in the

sense explained above. These "Arendtian" virtues are not "moral absolutes" which

could be formally demonstrated or which have transcendent validity. Such certainties

are not possible for us. But they do rest on a coherent vision of the human condition,

one that is compatible with a liberal polity. Because Arendt's political morality is

not based on claims to absolute knowledge but instead on respect for differences

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among individuals and the necessity for privacy, it cannot be regarded as a threat

to individual freedom. Hence it does not seem subject to the criticisms often

addressed by liberals to communitarians. Yet it does provide an account of moral

limits and of civic virtue which could be used to strengthen liberal political theory.

Notes

1. See Young-Bruehl (1982:374-376). It is possible, though far from certain, that the

projectedfinal volume of TheLifeof theMind,entitled "Judging,"would have been such

a treatise. See Beiner (1982: 89-156), Gray (1979: 225), Denneny (1979), and Benhabib

(1988). I would like here to acknowledgethat I have benefited fromthe criticalcomments

of Ronald Beiner,Jerome Kohn,John Danley, RonaldTerchek,and StephenDeLue, who

read earlier drafts of this article.

2. Arendt's typed lecture notes for these courses are with her papers in the Library of

Congress.These notes are not in very good order. Some of the material in these lectures

was incorporated nto Arendt (1982) and (1978), but not as an argumentabout morality.3. See, e.g., Kateb (1983), Elshtain (1981: 53-59), and Pitkin (1981).4. Such liberals include John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and many others. For a critical

analysis, see Dunn (1985: 1590.5. This has been one of the arguments of the communitariancritics of liberalism, such as

Alasdair Maclntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Robert Bellah. For critical

discussions of this literature,see Gutmann (1985) and Rosenblum (1987: ch. 7).6. For the Greeks, the metaphor for the direct experience of transcendent truth is visual, as

in Plato's parableof the cave or Pythagoras'sspectator. For the Hebrews, the metaphoris auditory;one hears the voice of God. The sensory metaphoremphasizesthe compellingnature of such experiences.One cannot doubt what one sees with one's own eyes or hears

with one's own ears. See Arendt (1965b: 024630; 1978 I: 6-9, 119).7. See also Arendt (1953: 122-124).8. This argumentis found throughoutArendt'spublishedworks and in the moralitylectures.

John Gunnell (1979:45-51; and 1986) has commentedcriticallyon Arendt's contribution

to what he calls the "myth of the tradition.'

9. Arendt (1966:024533). McKenna (1984: 348) says Arendt never asked the question:What

kind of ethicswould have preventedthe "horrifying onformism"of an Adolph Eichmann?

This is simply not correct.McKenna may not be satisfiedwith the outcome of her inquiry,but this was a dominant question in Arendt's thought from the mid-1960son.

10. She also sometimes used the term "conscience"but only after making it very clear that

she meant neither the voice of God within us (as "conscience" has meant in much of

Westerntradition)nor a feelingof guilt (as the termis often used in modernpsychology).

Arendt was not seeking the causes of moral sentiments, but secular moral principles.Afeeling of guilt can come about because old habits conflictwith new commands;but such

feelings only reflectconformityor noncomformity,not morality (1965b: 024603-4). The

non-collaboratorsfollowed their "consciences,"Arendt said, in the sense that to them

certain moral propositionsseemed "self-evident."Since this self-evidence did not seem to

be a matter of Platonicvision or fearof divine sanctionsor guilt, it was of great importanceto understandthis modern phenomenon of conscience. This was the guilding question of

the seminar on basic moral propositions (1966: 024533 and passim).Not everyone will

agree with Arendt's interpretationsof the reasons for noncollaboration.For example,McKenna (1984) arguesthat it was preciselythe moralabsolutists,and especiallyreligious

ones, who refused to cooperate with Nazis and Stalinists. This conflict cannot be

adequately addressedhere.

11. Arendt notes that the etymologyof "conscience"supports this referenceto the self (1965b:024586; 1971:418).

12. Quoted from a student's notes in Young-Bruehl (1982: 366). As Arendt put it, we must

start with Socratesand "strikeout on our own" (1966:024616). Much of this analysis of

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Socrates, thinking, and morality appeared in Arendt (1971) and was later incorporatedinto Arendt (1978 I).

13. Arendt found similar ideas in Democritus, Cicero, Eckhart, Kant, Spinoza, Shakespeare,Nietzsche, and Dostoyevsky. Kant, Arendt claimed, confuses things by presenting his

principle as a command (categorical imperative), but this is a self-misunderstanding.Really, she said, his claim is that if one doesn't want to contradict oneself (and hence livein disharmony with oneself), one ought not to make an exception for oneself (1965b:024567f)

14. It is, literally, as she put it in TheHumanCondition1958: 5), "thinkingwhat we are doing."In TheLife of theMind, Arendt (1978 I: passim)distinguished among (a) "thinking" (theinternal dialogue, which inquires into the meaning of experience); (b) "intellect" (whichis basically calculation and which in combination with sense perception, seeks knowledge;and (c) "contemplation" (the awed wonder at the cosmos or rapt vision or hearing of the

transcendent). Arendt attributed this concept of "thinking" to Socrates and Plato, forwhom the thinking self is portrayed as a two-in-one, in which the self questions itself and

answers its own questions. Hence the requirement that it be friends with itself (1978 I:ch. 18; see also Arendt 1971). She suggested that the reason moral philosophy has no

adequate name ("ethics"and "morals" are derived from terms for customs and mores) isits close association with thinking, so the thinker cannot think of inquiry into morality asa specialized subject apart from thinking itself (1965b: 024632).

15. Having reached this point in the morality lectures, Arendt seems to have become

sidetracked by discussions of the will and judgment. While the material on judgment(much of it published in Arendt (1982)) does pertain to morality and politics, that on the

will (mostly published in Arendt (1978 II) obscures the possibility of moral responsibility,as I have argued elsewhere (Jacobitti: 1988).

16. See Kateb (1983: 96f) for an important criticism.

17. See esp. Arendt (1958: 205) and (1977: 153). Kateb (1983: 33) calls these "moments of

recklessness."To be fair, when Arendt says that only "behavior"and not political actioncan be judged by "moral standards," she puts the latter two words in quotation marks,

implying that she means mere "mores," not the basic moral principles associated with

thinking (1958:205).18. Thinking involves a withdrawal into oneself and away from "the world." In this sense,

thinking occurs in "private."There is, of course, no guarantee that thinking will go on

just because there is privacy.19. In her lectures on Kant, ArendtpresentedKant's "nonwrittenpolitical philosophy" (1982:

19). George Kateb (1983: 33-40) acknowledges, but dismisses as inadequate, some of the

moral ideas discussed below. Kateb does not, I believe, do justice to Arendt here; but to

deal fully with his very thoughtful arguments goes beyond the scope of this article.

20.Sometimes,

as Benhabib(1988: 46) says,

Arendt wrote asthough politics

andmoralitywere utterly dichotomous phenomena. At other times (as when she calls promising and

forgiving moral principles guiding politics), she did not. She was simply not consistent

here (the inconsistency shows up throughout the two sets of morality lectures); however,it is consistent with her overall position to see politics as limited by morality as long as

morality does not mean traditional mores or transcendent standards.

21. Some of Arendt's virtues seem Aristotelian. In the two sets of lectures on morality,Arendt

disregardedAristotle's Ethicson the grounds that he makes ethics part of politics and that

his virtues are morally neutral (1965b: 024571; 1966:024530). Her treatment of Aristotle

raises interesting questions which go beyond the scope of this article.

22. See her discussion of Billy Budd (1963: 76-80) and of Jesus' teachings (1958: 74-77).23. Which in Arendt's language is to substitute "making"for "action"(1958: 226; 1977: 110-

111).24. Thus, Socratic thought requires the "enlarged mentality" Arendt described in her Kant

lectures (1982: 71-73). The irreducible gap which Benhabib (1988: 71-73) sees between

Arendt's view of morality (as internal harmony of the thinker)and the enlarged mentality

Arendt finds in Kant's nonwritten political philosophy is in fact closed in Arendt's concept

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HannahArendt nd PoliticalMorality

of friendship.It must be conceded, however, that Arendt is simply not consistenthere, asRonald Beiner has pointed out to me, citing Arendt (1978 II: 200), where Arendt

emphasizes the solitarynature of thought, almost directly contradictingthe passage citedabove from 1978 I: 187.

25. See Young-Bruehl (1982) for an account of the Arendt-Blucher marriage. A fullunderstanding of Arendt's concept of friendshipwould require analysis of her doctoraldissertation on Augustine's concept of love. See Scott (1988).

26. In a revealingcomment, Arendt noted that the wife of the head of the household in ancient

Greece, because she had to stay within the household, never met her equal; this has tomean that such women weredeprivedof friendship; t is not an endorsement of the ancienthousehold (1958: 72n).

27. Arendt said that the rise of the public realm in ancient times "occurredat the expense ofthe private realm of family and household" (1958: 29) and she praised the Romans, whodid not sacrificeprivate to public but understood"that these two realms could exist onlyin the form of coexistence"(1958: 59).

References

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Hill, M.A. (ed.) (1979). HannahArendt:TheRecoveryf thePublic World.New York: St. Martin's

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BiographicalNote

SUZANNEDUVALLJACOBITTI s Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois

University at Edwardsville and teaches courses in political theory. She has publishedarticles in Political Theoryand WesternPolitical Quarterlyand is currently working on a

book on Hannah Arendt's political thought. ADDRESS:Department of Political

Science, Box 1453, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL

62026, U.S.A.

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[Suzanne Duvall Jacobitti] Lo Publico, Lo Privadi y Lo Moral

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