Ezra's Bookshelf

The Promise of Politics

by Hannah Arendt · 258 pages · ~4.5 hrs

PhilosophyPolitics & Government

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Hannah Arendt, in lectures and essays collected after her death, examines why Western political philosophy has failed to adequately account for political action. She traces this failure to Plato's turn away from the uncertainty of public life toward the contemplative certainty of philosophy. Subsequent thinkers, she argues, have subordinated political activity to other values—truth, salvation, economic necessity—rather than understanding it on its own terms. Arendt recovers lost political experiences: the Greek understanding of the polis as a space of appearance where citizens distinguished themselves through speech and action; the Roman emphasis on foundation and the authority of tradition; the Christian transformation of politics into a lesser realm subordinate to salvation. She examines what these different understandings offer and obscure. The essays grapple with the twentieth century's catastrophes—totalitarianism, genocide, nuclear weapons—asking what resources political thought provides for addressing them. For readers interested in political theory or in Arendt's distinctive approach to thinking about public life, this collection provides essential engagement.

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