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In Tocqueville's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Liberal Republicanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Margie Lloyd
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Extract

An unfortunate consequence of viewing Arendt's thought in terms of a Hellenic-Nietzschean continuum is to raise serious questions about the enduring significance of Arendt's work on totalitarianism and its opposite: political and personal freedom. What is missing from the dominant scholarship is an appreciation of Arendt's acknowledged debt to Tocqueville; there is considerable suspicion that their differences are more important than their similarities. But Arendt and Tocqueville agree that the central political problem of modernity is despotism. Parts one and two challenge the view that Tocqueville is only concerned with soft despotism, whereas Arendt addresses the issue of harsh despotism which she subsequently abandoned. This article also restores Arendt's appreciation for Tocqueville's call for a new science of politics to overcome the problem of modernity. Part three shows their reliance on the “art of associating together” to preserve freedom in an age dominated by isolated and lonely individuals.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , Winter 1995 , pp. 31 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1995

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References

1. Habermas, Jürgen, “Hannah Arendt's Communications Concept of Power,” Social Research 44 (Spring 1977): 1–24Google Scholar, has generated the most attention in the literature concerning the influence of the ancients on Arendt. See also Dietz, Mary, “Hannah Arendt and Politics,” in Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory, ed. Shanley, Mary Lunden and Pateman, Carole (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991): 232–52Google Scholar; Fuss, Peter, “Hannah Arendt's Conception of Political Community,” in Hill, Melvyn A., Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979).Google Scholar By contrast, Kateb, George, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld, 1983)Google Scholar, locates Arendt within a Nietzschean framework. See also O'sullivan, Noel in “Hellenic Nostalgia,” in Contemporary Political Philosophers, ed. De Crespigny, A. and Minogue, K. (London: Methuen, 1976), pp. 228–51Google Scholar; Allen, Wayne, “Hannah Arendt: Existential Phenomenology and Political Freedom,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 9 (1982): 171–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Homo Aristocus: Hannah Arendt's Elites,” Idealistic Studies 13 (09 1983).Google Scholar Similarly, Judith Shklar's main argument is that The Origins is the work of an agonal Jew, written within a Nietzschean framework. See her article, "Hannah Arendt as Pariah,” Partisan Review 50 (1983): 64–77.Google Scholar

2. Steinberger, Peter J., “Hannah Arendt on Judgment,” American Journal of Political Science 34 (08 1990): 803–821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The citation is found on pp. 818–19. See also Springborg, Patricia, “Hannah Arendt and the Classical Republican Tradition” in Hannah Arendt: Thinking, Judging, Freedom, ed. Kaplan, Gisela T. and Kessler, Clive S. (Wellington: Allen and Unwin, 1989), pp. 9–17Google Scholar; Hinchman, Lewis P. and Hinchman, Sandra K., “Existentialism Politicized: Arendt's Debt to Jaspers,” Review of Politics 53 (1991): 435–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, have argued that Arendt resolved this tension late in life by abandoning ancient republicanism in favor of German-inspired existentialism. Ring, Jennifer, “The Pariah as Hero: Hannah Arendt's Political Actor,” Political Theory 19 (08 1991): 433–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also attempts to find a middle ground between the two alternatives but ends up with a heroine who picks and chooses when to participate. Villa, Dana R., “Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of Political Action,” Political Theory 20 (05 1992): 274–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pursues the possibility of a middle ground. Villa's, article generated a critical response from Bonnie Honig in Political Theory 21 (08 1993): 528–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Her “Politics of Agonism” does nothing to turn us away from the ArendtNietzsche relationship; on p. 529 she states that Arendt's “debt to Nietzsche is more complicated than Villa allows.”

3. Canovan, Margaret makes this same point in her latest book, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar I agree with Canovan that a discussion of totalitarianism runs throughout Arendt's work and is not located entirely in her early writing. The careful reader can draw the same conclusions without resorting to unpublished manuscripts.

4. Arendt, , The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958, cited as HC).Google Scholar

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7. O'sullivan, N. K., “Politics, Totalitarianism and Freedom: The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt,” Political Studies 21 (1973): 183–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar He argues that “the liberal or negative concept of freedom never receives adequate consideration” in Arendt's work. See p. 187.

8. Whitfield, Stephen J., Into the Dark: Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980).Google Scholar He claims Arendt was “indifferent to the protection of privacy.” See p. 148.

9. King, Richard H., “Endings and Beginnings: Politics in Arendt's Early Thought,” Political Theory 12 (05 1984): 235–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar According to King, Arendt's later discovery of the “republican tradition…of civic humanism” becomes the solution to her earlier rejection of liberalism and totalitarianism.

10. Dossa states that “Arendt's political theory is a sustained attack…on the liberal mind and its habits: her ideals of the public realm and the public self (citizen) explicitly challenge the liberal celebration of private interests and private lives. See “Hannah Arendt's Political Theory: Ethics and Enemies,” History of European Ideas 13 (1991): 385–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Voegelin, Eric, Review of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Review of Politics 15 (1953): 68–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Voegelin accuses her of a fundamental contradiction: she recognizes that totalitarianism is the result of the ascendancy of agnosticism but does nothing to restore any metaphysical foundation for action.

12. She disagrees with Voegelin that the answer lies in a return to religion and faith; “it will be hardly consoling to cling to an unchangeable nature of man and conclude that either man himself is being destroyed or that freedom does not belong to man's essential capabilities.” Rather, she says, “the success of totalitarianism is identical with a much more radical liquidation of freedom as a political and as a human reality than anything we have ever witnessed before.” See “Rejoinder to Eric Voegelin's Review of The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Review of Politics 15 (1953): 76–85.Google Scholar

13. Cooper, Leroy A., “Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy: An Interpretation,” Review of Politics 38 (1976): 145-76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See p. 155: “She speaks of public happiness as a part of complete happiness and asserts that the sphere of politics, ‘its greatness notwithstanding, is limited—it does not encompass the whole of man's and the world's existence.'” Emphasis is Cooper's. He cites Arendt's, Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1968, cited as BPF), p. 253.Google Scholar

14. HC, p. 66.

15. OT, p. 338.

16. Arendt, , “Rejoinder,” p. 80.Google Scholar

17. OT, p. 139.

18. OT, pp. 322, 405. See also BPF, p. 96.

19. OT, p. 475.

20. Her characterization of the victory of the household over the polis is expressed in Tocquevillean terms: the division between the public and private realms have been blurred because, today, “we see the body of people and political communities in the image of a family whose everyday affairs have to be taken care of by a gigantic, nation-wide administration of housekeeping” (HC, p. 28).

21. Ceasar, James, “Alexis de Tocqueville on Political Science, Political Culture, and the Role of the Intellectual,” American Political Science Review 79 (09 1985): 656–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, shows Tocqueville's distrust of the role of intellectualism in politics: they encourage individuals to exchange the common sense they learn through participation for abstract utopian visions.

22. On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1963, cited as OR), p. 168.Google Scholar See also OR, pp. 265–66 where Arendt describes the council system as a “miniature federal body.”

23. HC, p. 202. See also Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972, cited as CR), p. 230Google Scholar where she praises the federal system for its “horizontal” direction of power.

24. HC, pp. 202–203, summarizes her debt to Montesquieu. See also OR, pp. 118,181,266,302 and BPF, pp. 152,161. For her praise of Madison see OR, pp. 90, 150–54,164, 225. Her reference to Kant's notion of “enlarged mentality” appears in numerous locations throughout her work. See especially BPF, pp. 220,241 and her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 42–43.Google Scholar Her concept of “representative thinking” is perhaps most clearly expressed in BPF, p. 241. See also CR, p. 182.

25. OR, p. 171.

26. Ibid.

27. Democracy in America, trans. Reeve, Henry and ed. Bradley, Phillips (New York: Vintage Books, 1945, cited as DIA), volume 1, especially 61–101Google Scholar. See OR, pp. 113,118,166, and 310 for her reliance on Tocqueville's observation that the “municipal spirit” was alive and well in the 1830s.

28. DIA, I: 27–47.Google Scholar

29. CR, pp. 94–95.

30. Canovan, Margaret states in The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1974), p. 15Google Scholar, that as a “partisan of public freedom,” Arendt is a “companion of men like de Tocqueville, Jefferson, and Machiavelli"; Shklar, Judith ("Hannah Arendt as Pariah,” p. 70)Google Scholar concedes that Arendt finds Montesquieu and Tocqueville appealing; Kateb, George (Arendt: Politics, Consciousness, Evil, p. 59)Google Scholar remarks that “Tocqueville's insight is acknowledged as seminal” by Arendt. All three important insights go unexplored. In her latest book, Canovan reaffirms the comparison of Tocqueville and Arendt. Her investigation of Arendt's unpublished manuscripts reveals that her 1955 lecture notes from University of California, Berkeley, “contain a heavily emphasized quotation from J. P. Mayer's book on Tocqueville recording how he had himself read Plato, Machiavelli, Burke, etc. while trying to understand his own time: ‘He felt a need to measure the wealth of his American observations against the whole Western heritage of political doctrine'” (Arendt, A Reinterpretation, p. 67). Ironically, Canovan falls into the same trap that she accuses others by ignoring her advice to follow Arendt's leads for interpreting her work. Canovan's restoration of The Origins ignores the impact of Tocqueville's work on Arendt's thought.

31. This is how Tocqueville, described himself in a letter to Stoffels dated 24 July 1836, Memoirs, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, Gustave De (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), 1: 381.Google Scholar For a discussion of “new readings” of Tocqueville which portray Democracy as the work of an aristocrat or, conversely, a communitarian rather than a new kind of liberal, see “Polity Forum: Alexis de Tocqueville,” Polity 22 (Winter 1992): 283–313Google Scholar.

32. Whitfield, Into the Dark, is a major proponent of this view.

33. Arendt, , “Organized Guilt,” in The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, ed. Feldman, Ron H. (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1978).Google Scholar Subsequent references to this particular essay will be cited as “OG”; other references to the book itself will be cited as JP.

34. This is the conclusion reached by Jacobitti, Suzanne D. in “Individualism and Political Community: Arendt and Tocqueville on the Current Debate in Liberalism,” Polity 23 (Summer 1991): 585–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Jacobitti alone makes the effort to seriously compare Tocqueville and Arendt.

35. DIA, I: 310Google Scholar, italics in original.

36. CR, pp. 94–95, citing Tocqueville–s remarks in DIA, I, chapter 12—on “Political Associations in the United States”—and II, book ii, chapter 5—“Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life.”

37. CR, pp. 86,93, 225.

38. BPF, p. 283. Arendt, cites DIA, II, bk. 4,349.Google Scholar

39. Hill, , Arendt: Recovery of the Public World, p. 337.Google Scholar

40. OT, p. 438.

41. BPF, p. 96. See also OT, pp. 405, 455, 466.

42. OT, p. 427.

43. BPF, p. 87.

44. DIA, I: 316.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., II: 336.

46. Ibid., I: 274.

47. Ibid., II: 93.

48. OT, p. 245. In this regard, Arendt and Tocqueville are guilty of making the same error: they claim that ancient tyranny left the soul alone. But as Stanley, John L., “Is Totalitarianism a New Phenomenon? Reflections on Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism,” Review of Politics 49 (1987): 177–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has pointed out, what makes extreme democracy and extreme oligarchy similar to tyranny in Aristotle's classification—in other words what makes them all bad regimes—“is that they are despotikai.” And by despotism, Aristotle means “the enslavement of the soul” (p. 203). Thus, to Stanley totalitarianism is actually an extreme form of tyranny anticipated by Aristotle, rather than a unique kind of cruelty and new form of government.

49. OT, p. 245.

50. OT, p. 325.

51. OT, p. 441. See also p. 438: “The camps are meant not only to exterminate people and degrade human beings, but also serve the ghastly experiment of eliminating, under scientifically controlled conditions, spontaneity itself.”

52. To Whitfield (Into the Dark), Tocqueville did not propose a model for totalitarianism but merely inspired conservative critiques of the welfare state. Instead, he suggests that Arendt follows the “fragmentary” and “evocative” lines of Nietzsche, yet he gives no evidence for this linkage. But in Democracy, Tocqueville may have been writing about America, but he was thinking about Europe. See the excellent article by Strout, Cushing, “Tocqueville's Duality: Describing America and Thinking of Europe.” American Quarterly 21 (Spring 1969): 87–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In Arendt's case, one might also say that in OR, she describes America and thinks of Europe.

53. DIA, ed. Mayer, J. P. (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 691.Google Scholar I believe this edition more accurately describes what both Tocqueville and Arendt have in mind than the Bradley edition which refers to “guardians” rather than “schoolmasters.” See Bradley edition, II: 335.

54. DIA, II: 148.Google Scholar

55. See Appendix 1, AA in DIA. The note to which he refers is found in volume II, p. 387.

56. Boesche, Roger, ed., Alexis de Tocqueville: Selected Letters on Politics and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 373.Google Scholar

57. See footnote 45 where Tocqueville portrays soft despotism in a similar fashion.

58. Ibid., p. 94.

59. Ibid.

60. DIA, I: 341.Google Scholar

61. Ibid.

62. DIA, I: 395.Google Scholar For a further discussion on the differences between ancient and modern slavery, see DIA, I: 370–72Google Scholar; suffice it to note here that Tocqueville claims that modern slavery is based on race. Regarding Tocqueville's observation on how Southerners mistreated American Indians, please see DIA, I: 348–69Google Scholar, where Tocqueville anticipated the complete genocide of Native Americans. According to Arendt, the racial theory of totalitarianism “denies the very possibility of a common humanity” (EJ, p. 268).

63. Boesche, , Selected Letters, p. 276Google Scholar, emphasis added. See also his article, “The Prison: Tocqueville's Model for Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (12 1980): 550–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for Tocqueville's view that prisons represent the “most complete despotism.” The isolation and powerlessness of the prisoners, and their concern with their own self-interest, enables the “masters” to direct the lives of the prisoners. Boesche, elsewhere, notes that while “Tocqueville may not have foreseen the murderous nature of twentieth-century fascism, some authors such as Hannah Arendt seem to agree that Tocqueville outlined the underlying prerequisites of totalitarianism.” See his article, “Why Could Tocqueville Predict So Well?” Political Theory 11 (01 1983): 79–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 99.

64. EJ, p. 49.

65. DIA, II: 336, 337.Google Scholar

66. De Tocqueville, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, trans Gilbert, Stuart (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955, noted as TOR), p. xiii.Google Scholar

67. TOR, p. 169.

68. Ibid., p. 118.

69. In other words, it is inaccurate to limit the comparison of Arendt and Tocqueville to simply a “European” work on terror by Arendt with an “American” work on despotism by Tocqueville.

70. “OG,” p. 234.

71. OT, pp. 145–46. She views Hobbes as an ideologist, or apologist for the bourgeois class in a fashion which is similar to the treatment found in Macpherson and Strauss. See Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962)Google Scholar, and Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).Google Scholar

72. She does not associate Locke or the covenanting tradition with Hobbes.

73. OT, pp. 143–44.

74. OT, p. 179.

75. There is considerable merit to Leon Botstein's reflections in his “The Jew as Pariah: Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy,” Dialectical Anthropology 8 (10 1983): 47–73.Google Scholar He makes the provocative suggestion that EJ be read as a companion piece to OR. Botstein argues that her critique of the banality of evil points to “the political necessity for freedom, individuality, differentiation, decentralized authority, de-bureaucratization, truth telling and barriers to mob and mass politics” (pp. 64–65). According to Botstein, Arendt wanted Israel to be like America, with its commitment to liberal republican principles. I agree, but believe it is important to note that Arendt's concern with banality preceded her arrival in America.

76. “Eichmann in Jerusalem”: Exchange of Letters between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt Ganuary 1964), in JP, pp. 240–51. This citation occurs on p. 241. See Hinchman and Hinchman above for an existentialist interpretation of the Scholem-Arendt exchange.

77. JP, p. 245.

78. JP, pp. 250–51.

79. “OG,” p. 228.

80. Ibid.

81. “OG,” pp. 228–31. See also p. 232. In her rejoinder to Voegelin's review of OT, she remarked that totalitarian policies “have exploded our traditional categories of political thought…and the standard of our moral judgment.” See Arendt, , “Rejoinder,” p. 80.Google Scholar

82. “OG,” pp. 231–32.

83. OT, p. 338.

84. “OG,” p. 233.

85. “OG,” p. 230.

86. EJ, p. 49, original italics. Arendt extols in The Origins, Dark Times, and Eichmann, the importance of “thinking” which can only take place if there is at least a partial withdrawal from the world and that withdrawal is protected from total external domination. A more complete account of Arendt's concept of thinking and action can be found in The Life of the Mind. I refer the reader back to earlier arguments on representative thinking in the opening section of this article.

87. DIA, II: 148-51.Google Scholar Tocqueville and Arendt remind us that the “chief business” in life is that humans should “remain their own masters….Otherwise, they will become the slaves of an able and ambitious man” (p. 149).

88. Jacobitti, , “Individualism and Political Community,” p. 586.Google Scholar Jacobitti cites a letter from the Arendt papers, Library of Congress, Box 9, where Arendt acknowledges to Seymour Drescher “the ‘great influence' of Tocqueville on her thought.” See also Canovan cited above on Arendt's 1955 Berkeley lecture notes.

89. Ibid., p. 592.

90. Ibid., p. 597.

91. Ibid., p. 602.

92. DIA, I: 310–18Google Scholar; II: 21–29.

93. Ibid., II: 142–56.

94. BPF, p. 283, citing Tocqueville.

95. Zuckert, Catherine, “Not By Preaching: Tocqueville on the Role of Religion in American Democracy,” Review of Politics 43 (1981): 259–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

96. OT, p. 4.

97. OR, p. 113.

98. OT, p. 345.

99. OR, pp. 132, 245.

100. Ibid., p. 222. See also p. 260 on Arendt's admiration for Tocqueville's ability to predict.

101. CR, p. 98, Arendt's emphasis.

102. Ibid., p. 95, Arendt's emphasis.

103. OT, p. ix.

104. BPF, p. 106.

105. Ibid., pp. 76–77. See also pp. 25 and 95.

106. OT, p. 345.

107. Ibid., pp. 188–89.

108. Ibid., p. 171. See also p. 151, where she cites Tocqueville's remark that Gobineau's racial doctrines “are probably wrong and certainly pernicious.”

109. Ibid., p. 346. See Mayer, Robert, “Hannah Arendt, National Socialism and the Project of Foundation,” Review of Politics 53 (1991): 469-87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a critique of Arendt's claim that the laws of nature to which Hitler appealed were Darwinian. Mayer's observation does not alter my argument.

110. OT, p. 347. See also pp. 268 and 458.

111. Ibid., p. ix.

112. Ibid., p. 179.

113. Ibid., p. 298. See also pp. 235, 243, 267, and 451 for her treatment of human nature.

114. See Stanley, “Is Totalitarianism a New Phenomenon?”

115. DIA, I: 269.Google Scholar

116. Ibid., II: 248. See his chapter on “Honor in the United States” for a general discussion of the “permanent and universal interests of mankind” (pp. 242–55).

117. Ibid., 1: 269.

118. Ibid., II: 342, 345. The Mayer edition refers to “liberty and human dignity.” See p. 699.

119. DIA, I: 203.Google Scholar

120. Ibid., II: 117. The idea that in America individuals “are born equal” is based on an appeal to history and not to natural right. In France, humans became equal as a result of revolution, but lost liberty in the process (Ibid., p. 108).

121. Ibid., 1:36; OT, p. 124; and BPF, pp. 246–47. For a contrary interpretation, see Kraynak, Robert P., “Tocqueville's Constitution,” American Political Science Review 81 (12 1987): 1175–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar He claims that Tocqueville appeals to a higher law background as the ultimate foundation for his constitutionalism. My point is that Tocqueville's appeal, like Arendt's, is ambiguous.

122. DIA, I: 37.Google Scholar

123. Ibid., p. 327.

124. Ibid., II: 115.

125. Arendt herself carries Tocqueville's principle of association beyond Tocqueville. She identifies the “spirit” of American constitutional law as the long experience of covenanting and making mutual promises. See CR, p. 97. Rather than grounding the notion of observing and breaking agreements on the “fiction” of natural law, she claims that citizens obey the law because of “a ‘consensus universalis' as Tocqueville called it” (Ibid., p. 88). On the other hand, she portrays the right to dissent and civil disobedience as “nothing but the latest form of voluntary association” (Ibid., p. 96). She agrees completely with Tocqueville that the art of associating together was “the peculiar strength of the American political system,” and applies this art of association to protect “organized minorities” from the tyranny of the majority (Ibid., p. 94). Put differently, she grounds the right to dissent in the covenanting tradition itself, one which she associates with Tocqueville, rather than an individualistic act of defiance derived from a higher law tradition.

126. DIA, II: 23.Google Scholar

127. Ibid., p. 149.

128. OR, p. 11. According to Arendt, “the raison d'être of politics is freedom” (BPF, p. 146).