common sense & political barbarism in the theory of hannah arendt

Northeastern Political Science Association

Common Sense & Political Barbarism in the Theory of Hannah ArendtAuthor(s): Sandra K. HinchmanReviewed work(s):Source: Polity, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Winter, 1984), pp. 317-339Published by: Palgrave Macmillan JournalsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3234510 .Accessed: 19/02/2012 19:16

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Common Sense & Political Barbarism in the Theory of Hannah Arendt

Sandra K. Hinchman St. Lawrence University

We do not quite know why an especially barbarous kind of totalitarianism triumphed in parts of Europe during the 1920's and 1930's; nor can we be certain that it will not arise again. Sandra Hinchman suggests that we might usefully turn to Hannah Arendt's interpretation. Arendt linked the rise of totalitarianism to a declining role of "common sense" in the politics of modern societies. In her usage, common sense refers to a process of developing our perspectives on public issues through discussion and debate during which participants are willing to learn from one another. Any consensus emerging from this kind of a dialogue stands in sharp contrast to the uniformity of ideological reflexes that totalitarian regimes inculcate.

Sandra K. Hinchman is Associate Professor of Government at St. Lawrence University. Her other work in the area of political theory has appeared in the Review of Politics and the Centennial Review.

Throughout her career, Hannah Arendt was haunted by the political catastrophes of our century, especially the monstrous crimes committed

by totalitarian regimes. As the example of her native Germany demon- strated, a high level of culture and enlightenment do not suffice to immunize a nation against acts of public brutality. Many of Arendt's con-

temporaries, seeing how successful totalitarian movements were throughout Europe, concluded that Nazism was only the most extreme mani- festation of a sickness that had penetrated to the marrow of Western civilization. Eminent theologians and political philosophers laid our moder political disasters at the doorstep of nihilism, the collapse of the moral and legal restraints which had hitherto kept man's worst instincts under control. They argued that to avert future disasters Western civili-

318 Common Sense & Barbarism in Hannah Arendt

zation must re-establish customary bonds between people, reawaken traditional piety or revive pre-modern conceptions of natural right and natural law.'

But this analysis of the problem did not satisfy Arendt; nor did the

proposed resolutions. She often pointed out that Bolshevism and Nazism were not really nihilistic movements, at least not in their official ideol-

ogies. Their adherents thought they were guided by definite, rigorous standards of conduct, and usually looked askance at "anarchists," "dec- adents," and the like. Many individual Communist Party members, especially, lived notably austere and disciplined lives. The trouble was that the theories on which totalitarian movements rested replaced "positive" morality by a purportedly higher law which seemed to ordain and justify hitherto unimaginable atrocities such as the extinction of "inferior races" or "dying classes." 2 Thus the problem did not so much involve moral

failing as a more or less upright, conventional life conducted within the framework of an insane and barbarous interpretation of reality.

Conventionalism, or rigid observance of traditional moral and legal rules, supplies no bulwark against totalitarian atrocities because it does not foster the habits of mind that could enable people to withstand ideo-

logical appeals. "If somebody wishes to abolish the old 'values' or 'vir- tues,' he will find that easy enough, provided he offers a new code.... The more firmly men hold on to the old code, the more eager they will be to assimilate themselves to the new one." Thus, under Nazism and Bolshevism, the "basic commandments of Western morality" were simply "reversed: in one case, 'Thou shall not kill'; in the other, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.' "3

Arendt was likewise unwilling to count on individual conscience as a

safeguard against public brutality. The dictates of conscience are sub-

jective and unpolitical, trembling "for the individual self and its in-

1. See, for example, Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1950); Eric Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 1975); Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944); and Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962).

2. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 465. Hereafter cited in the text as OT.

3. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, Volume I: Thinking (New York: Har- court Brace Jovanovich, 1978), pp. 176-177. Hereafter cited in the text as LM I. See also Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1965), pp. 150-151, for a somewhat different analysis of the same issue. Hereafter cited in the text as EJ.

Sandra K. Hinchman 319

tegrity" rather than "for the future course of the world." 4 Nothing in the logic of conscience compels us to air our views on state policies; although there were countless "inward opponents" of Nazism in the Third Reich, for instance, their objections to the death camps were in- consequential since they were not voiced in public (EJ, 103). Even when it is publicized, the voice of conscience becomes just another opinion, its influence proportionate to the number of like-minded others (CR, 68). Rarely does it have public efficacy.

For these reasons, Arendt sought to address the crises of our time in non-moral terms. Two observations she made while covering the Eich- mann trial in 1961 were central to this project. First, she noted that "As Eichmann told it, the most potent factor in the soothing of his own conscience was the simple fact that he could see no one... who actually was against the Final Solution" (EJ, 116). Second, a decisive "flaw in Eichmann's character was his almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow's point of view." As a result, he could be oblivious to the "words and the presence of others," and to "reality as such" (EJ, 47-48, 49).

Taken together, these observations convinced Arendt that what we need to restrain political barbarism is not a set of rules, imposed from the outside or self-legislated, that we might routinely apply in all our undertakings, but instead a public activity which, when performed, would force us to consider things from the perspective of other people. Political bestiality occurred not because its perpetrators enjoyed flouting moral

injunctions, but because they surrendered their capacity to judge upon embracing an ideology that claimed to provide for every contingency.5 Subsequently they operated in a political and epistemological vacuum that allowed no discussion of public issues and recognized no reality that might seem to threaten the ruling ideology.

Adopting a position that baffled, even outraged, many of her contemporaries,6 Arendt found her remedy for the problem of public brutality

4. Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovano- vich, 1972), pp. 60-61. Hereafter cited in the text as CR.

5. As Hans Morganthau observes in "Hannah Arendt and Totalitarian Democ- racy,"Social Research 44 (1977): "The evil [of totalitarianism]... has its roots in an evil reasoning but not in an evil of intent" (p. 129).

6. See, for example, Martin Jay, "Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views," Partisan Review 45 (1978), pp. 348-368; Bernard Schwartz, "The Religion of Politics: Re- flections on the Thought of Hannah Arendt," Dissent 17 (1970), pp. 144-161; N. K. O'Sullivan, "Politics, Totalitarianism and Freedom: The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt," Political Studies 21 (1973): 183-198; and Margaret Canovan, "The Contradictions of Hannah Arendt's Political Thought," Political Theory 6 (1978): 5-26.


not in a moral reawakening per se but in the dynamics of political action itself, and more specifically in the production of what she called "common sense." To understand her position, we must first look briefly at what she meant by action and how she differentiated it from other forms of human endeavor.

I. Action, Behavior, and Common Sense

As Arendt defines it, "action" does not denote all that we say and do. It must be distinguished sharply from labor and work on the one side and mere behavior on the other. "Labor" is Arendt's term for those tasks and processes which sustain life by providing the body with its vital necessities. All types of labor have a common characteristic, to wit, that they are inherently cyclical, unending and repetitive, like the biological functions they serve. We labor insofar as we seek to minimize pain; indeed, our laboring activity does not really allow us to rise much above the level of animal existence. For this reason, Arendt associates labor with sameness and oblivion.

If we remain in bondage to external nature and our own natural urges when we labor, we can dominate them through 'work." As workers we fabricate objects which become more or less permanent additions to the human artifice, things designed for use or aesthetic appreciation. Work thereby allows us to construct a durable world in contrast with nature's continual destruction and renewal. But its shortcoming is that it spawns an instrumental mentality which cannot distinguish between utility and meaningfulness.

"Action" remedies this deficiency. It is the activity that transpires directly between people, through words and deeds which reveal their agents' interests, opinions, principles or autobiographies. Action individualizes us, allowing us to communicate "who" rather than "what" we are; human uniqueness does not appear nearly so vividly (if at all) in labor and work, with their impersonal rhythms and exacting require- ments. Out of our self-disclosures emerge stories to which we attach meanings. And the greatest of these stories concern historic actions, when people appear together in public to initiate new sequences of events.

Arendt opposes the tendency to treat action and behavior as syn- onyms; in fact she considers them direct opposites. Behavior encom- passes all routinized, habitual or traditional forms of self-presentation. On a social level, to "behave" means to follow society's "innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to 'normalize' its members,... to


exclude spontaneous action or outstanding achievement." 7 The totalitarian regimes spoken of earlier sought to eradicate the human capacity to act, creating a world of pure behavior, emptied of all unpredictability. Their instrument for effecting this goal was terror, intended to frighten and isolate people so completely that the laws of nature or history could "race freely through mankind, unhindered by any spontaneous human action" (OT, 465). Just as terror cut people off from the company of their peers, ideology severed their contact with reality, so that in the one case they lost the capacity for intersubjective experience, and in the other, the capacity for thought:

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. (OT, 474)

Genuine action, according to Arendt, nurtures the opposite qualities and in doing so deters people from committing savage, heinous deeds. "Common sense" serves as a safeguard against any potential for evil- doing, found neither in labor nor in work, that action may have. This is especially important in light of Arendt's argument that while behavior is evaluated quite properly by moral standards, action should be judged only by its greatness and gloriousness.

As in ordinary usage, common sense for Arendt connotes the ability to cope with the world without falling victim to superstitions, illusions or distortions inspired by grandiose theories. It suggests a sober, prudent attitude that recognizes the external world's resistance to the ego's at- tempts to impose patterns on it. The conclusions of common sense are neither eternal and irrefutable, like mathematical truth, nor accessible only to the specially gifted or favored, like contemplative truth or divine revelation. Instead, they are tentative, built on past experience and alter- able if they conflict with experience in the future. Many modern observ- ers regard common sense as "an inner faculty without any world relationship" (HC, 283). Taking exception to this view, Arendt contends that common sense in fact exists in the "web" of human relationships. It is the product of speech, memory and history, and it has both political and epistemological8 functions.

7. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 40. Hereafter cited in the text as HC.

8. For a discussion of Arendt's epistemological assumptions, see Bhikhu C. Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1981), pp. 84-91.


II. Common Sense in its Aesthetic and Epistemological Significance

In formulating her idea of common sense, Arendt follows very closely- though not unreservedly-Kant's analysis in the Critique of Judgment.9 Kant had shown in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason, respectively, how the faculty of the understanding generates "cognitions" of nature and how the faculty of reason can "legislate" for the will (that is, override natural desire by the moral law). In both cases-scientific knowledge and morality-the individual is confronted with laws that are valid for all rational beings, quite apart from the contingent circumstances in which they may find themselves. All that remains for the individual's judgment is correctly to subsume the particular case under the general law.0l

But there is another dimension of human life in which we cannot rely on any certain cognition or moral rule. Kant himself believed this to be most clearly true in regard to "taste," our feeling for what is pleasing and displeasing. Arendt, however, sees in the Critique of Judgment the rudiments of a much broader enterprise. She considers politics to be peculiarly concerned with human plurality, people joined together in an ongoing community and requiring each other to live well. Kant's third Critique strikes her, by this standard, as the most political of his major works precisely because it is the only one that deals explicitly with "men" rather than "man," with mutual dependence rather than with obedience to universal laws and rules (KL, 27). Accordingly, she is especially in- trigued by the principle Kant sets down in respect to aesthetic judgments, namely, that they lay claim to intersubjective validity.

In Kant's view, a judgment of aesthetic taste-such as that "the 'Mona Lisa' is a beautiful painting"-lies between the mere sense of taste ("chocolate tastes good to me"), which really is subjective, and objective cognitions such as "two plus two is four." We think that our judgments of taste are valid intersubjectively and therefore communicable- for instance, that other people should see in the "Mona Lisa" the same

beauty we do. Kant could only account for this claim by assuming the

9. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). Hereafter cited in the text as KL. Beiner's "Interpretive Essay" discusses the nature of Kant's influence on Arendt's theory of judgment; see especially pp. 121-126 and 135-136. On this same topic see also Jean Yarbrough and Peter Stern, "Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa: Reflections on Hannah Arendt's Political Thought in The Life of the Mind," Re- view of Politics 43 (1981): 338-342.

10. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, translated by J. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1951), p. 15. Hereafter cited in the text as CI.


existence of what he called the sensus communis, understood as the capacity to transcend one's narrow, subjective viewpoint:

under the sensus communis we must include the idea of a sense common to all, i.e., a faculty of judgment which, in its reflection, takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of all other men in thought, in order, as it were, to compare its judgment with the collective reason of humanity, and thus to escape the illusion arising from the private conditions that could be so easily taken for objective, which would injuriously affect the judgment. (CJ, 136)

Thus, chief among Kant's maxims for the cultivation of common sense, all of which serve to liberate people from prejudiced, one-sided views of their objects, is the instruction "to put ourselves in thought in the place of everyone else" (CJ, 136). This instruction, as we shall see later, is critical to Arendt's project.

It is a short step from Kant's essentially aesthetic treatment of common sense to the political or quasi-moral meaning which Arendt wishes to give it. Unlike Kant, she eschews the traditional definition of human- kind as sharing a "nature" as rational animals. Instead, she places people from the outset in a context, the "human condition," limited in time by natality and morality."l Humans are appearing beings living in a world of appearances. At birth, when we first appear, we are endowed with five sense organs, each corresponding to a "specific sensorily per- ceptible property of the world" (LM I, 50), which allow things to appear to us in different ways. Among these appearances are errors, sem- blances and illusions. Our sense organs cannot correct each other for accuracy because they are incommensurable: Hearing cannot be trans- muted into smelling, and so on. Fortunately, we are also blessed with common sense, the "greatest of all" the senses (LM I, 119). Common sense "regulates and controls" and fits together our other senses by guar- anteeing that, although they are "utterly different from each other," they "have the same object in common" (OT, 475; LM I, 50). Its product is a "sensation of reality," which helps us to move about and feel at home in a world of appearances (LM I, 58-59).

However, our "sensation of reality" does not result from an automatic intersensory adjustment process alone. Much more importantly for our purposes here, it also depends on interpersonal agreement. The "presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us

11. For an analysis of Arendt's rejection of human nature arguments, see Gordon Tolle, Human Nature Under Fire: The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982).


of... reality" (HC, 50); in fact, "we can never be sure of anything that only we ourselves know." 12 Again following Kant, Arendt remarks that the opposite of common sense is actually insanity, characterized by sensus privatus (KL, 71). People lacking common sense live in worlds all their own; they are unable to conceive of how the world appears to others.

As one pieces together Arendt's scattered remarks on common sense, its importance gradually comes into focus. Where it merely assured the (possible) universal validity of judgments of taste in Kant, for Arendt it comes close to absorbing the functions of "understanding" as well. That is, it now virtually designates the conditions under which objectivity of knowledge is possible. Implicitly, Arendt rejects the ontological assump- tion with which Kant began the Critique of Pure Reason: that man's theoretical relationship to the world (as in natural science) is the only one capable of generating objectively true cognitions. As a student of Heidegger and Husserl, she postulates that our objectivity depends on our immediate and practical relationships to things and other people. My sense of the objectivity of my outlook cannot be sustained without the conviction that others share it, as the experiences of prisoners kept in solitary confinement and dissidents held in psychiatric wards seem to bear out. Their testimony indicates that the most frightening aspect of their situation is the loss of a firm grasp on reality. If everyone treats you as though you were mad, it is difficult to keep assuring yourself that sane people outside the asylum share your views. Similarly, if you are put in complete isolation from others, your ability to "trust [your] immediate sensual experience" (OT, 476) is greatly diminished.

Since common sense works primarily by comparisons of perspectives, it depends to an extraordinary degree on nuances of language, which is what makes the experience of others accessible to us. Language, "corresponding to or following our common sense, gives each object its common name; this commonness is not only the decisive factor for intersubjective communication... but it also serves to identify a datum that appears differently to each of the five senses" (LM I, 119). Arendt's frequent use of etymological analysis attests to the great importance she attaches to language. A language is the repository of a particular way of apprehending the world that grows out of collective symbols and mem- ories. It contains the common sense of the past in a congealed form. Where language is truncated or restricted, as it is in some communities,

12. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: The Viking Press, 1965), p. 92. Hereafter cited in the text as OR.


the constitution of one's self-identity and that of the external world are

impaired, since both depend on common sense.13 The importance of the political dimension of our lives-our speaking

and acting in concert-cannot therefore be overestimated. Common sense is neither a spontaneous outgrowth of our life together nor the

product of detached observation, but the result of an activity in which we compare perspectives on the world through speech. Correspondingly, the faculty of judgment-our ability to distinguish a reasonable pro- posal from barbaric nonsense-is not something we automatically pos- sess at all times like a trait of character. It has to be recreated and rein- forced constantly through public discourse. When this does not happen, even people who begin with laudable moral principles, such as Christian ethics or humanistic socialism, may imperceptibly slide into dogmatism and ideology.

Although perspectives on the world can be exchanged in many set-

tings, the generation of common sense properly belongs to our "common

meeting ground," the public arena or "space of appearances." It requires the existence of a public realm in which we can exchange opinions and outlooks and test ideas. To be deprived of this arena

means to be deprived of reality, which, humanly and politically speaking, is the same as appearance. To men the reality of the world is guaranteed by the presence of others, by its appearing to all;... and whatever lacks this appearance comes and passes away like a dream, intimately and exclusively our own but without real-

ity. (HC, 199)

Unlike family life, wherein the "subjectivity of privacy can be prolonged and multiplied," public life "relies on the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects in which the common world pre- sents itself and for which no common measurement or denominator can ever be devised" (HC, 57). Common sense dwells in the space between

13. In this respect Arendt's theory seems to resemble that of Jiirgen Habermas, who is concerned with detecting communication blockages which prevent people from understanding the true nature of their society. But in his essay, "Hannah Arendt's Concept of Power," Social Research 44 (1977), Habermas faults Arendt for not distinguishing "between illusionary and nonillusionary convictions"-i.e., for seeing a "yawning abyss between knowledge and opinion that cannot be closed with arguments" (pp. 22-23). For two rebuttals, see James T. Knauer, "Motive and Goal in Hannah Arendt's Concept of Political Action," American Political Science Review 74 (1980), especially pp. 730-731; and Margaret Canovan, "A Case of Distorted Communications: A Note on Habermas and Arendt," Political Theory 11 (1983): 105-116.


people. It cannot be captured or monopolized, and it simply withers away if an actor succeeds in imposing his or her own framework on all others: "The end of the common world has come when it is seen only under one aspect and is permitted to present itself in only one perspective" (HC, 58).

III. Common Sense in its Political Significance

Nothing could be easier than to accuse Arendt of making a play on words in developing her theory of common sense. She shifts the meaning of "common" away from its usual connotation of "ordinary, present in all members of the group." Now "common" suggests some attribute lodged only in the aggregate and not in individuals taken singly and in isolation. Likewise, she takes great liberties with "sense." In modern parlance, to be sensible or to have good sense means not to do foolish, imprudent things. Onto this usage Arendt wants to graft the much older stock of associations clustered around the Latin sensus. Common sense is a "sixth sense" to Arendt, a source of direct political knowledge available only to an organized community of speaking, acting, equal citizens. However, the word, "sense," also connotes meaning or significance, as in the phrase, "that makes no sense to me." And finally, it can suggest opinion, as in referring to "the sense of the meeting." If we are to understand Arendt correctly, we must keep all these different designations in mind since, as she herself would argue, they reveal a single root experience. Drawing the strands together, we might say that common sense is a consensus or shared opinion on the significance of a common life, an opinion that is internalized by all members of a political community and which prevents them from undertaking actions that would be non- sensical or violative of the imperatives of public existence and its

preservation. We reach a fuller understanding of Arendt's meaning if we distinguish

common sense from other expressions of belief which it superficially re- sembles, such as Rousseau's general will.14 Rousseau proposed that when a political choice presented itself, the general will would arise automatically out of the shared mentality created by communal laws and institutions, provided that each citizen expressed "only his own opinion" in isolation from the views of others.15 He discouraged political talk on

14. Arendt sharply criticizes Rousseau's general-will theory in chapter 2 of On Revolution.

15. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and the Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Men, ed. Lester Crocker (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967), p. 31.


the principle that it might introduce faction, deception or selfishness into the community, drowning out the voice of virtue. No discussion, debate or persuasion could be permitted, because communication would yield voting blocs opposed to the common good by definition. Rousseau could not conceive of political speech as anything other than a medium of manipulation. Only the inwardness of silent self-examination would reveal the truly common ends of the state. A strange conception, indeed: as speakers and actors we are bourgeois, while as introspecting animals we are citoyens.

Arendt would find little to commend in Rousseau's position.l6 In her view, no self-subsisting common good exists. The only common good that we can know is the shifting product of dialogue. Silent introspection is either apolitical or it is the source of schemes that partake of no sensus communis and are therefore an implicit threat to political life. Debate, she asserts, "constitutes the very essence of political life";17 the world is "'inhuman'... unless it is constantly talked about by human beings." 18

Meditation on the common good, "unchallenged" by public dialogue, can produce aberrations like Fourier's utopia, Skinner's Walden Two, and the more bizarre scenarios of the Hudson Institute, not to mention such horrors as the massive strategic bombing program in Vietnam.19

If common sense is not a volonte generale, it is all the more opposed to modem ideologies. Although ideologies are not divorced from speech, they embody an element of manipulation and oversimplification which is alien to common sense. Ideology, which "treats the course of events as though it followed the same 'law' as the logical exposition of [an] 'idea'," grows out of our capacity for logical reasoning, the "only capacity of the human mind which needs neither the self nor the other nor the world in order to function safely" (OT, 469, 477). Consequently, it appeals to people who are so lonely, atomized and estranged from the human artifice that the conclusions of common sense are either not accessible or not convincing to them. Recalling our previous discussion of

16. For a dissenting view which emphasizes the affinity between Rousseau and Arendt, see O'Sullivan, op. cit., pp. 194-195, and also "Hannah Arendt: Hellenic Nostalgia and Industrial Society" by the same author, in Contemporary Political Philosophers, ed. Anthony de Crespigny and Kenneth Minogue (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1975), especially pp. 233-237.

17. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking Press, 1968), p. 241. Hereafter cited in the text as BPF.

18. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1968), p. 24. Hereafter cited in the text as MDT,

19. Arendt attacks Pentagon war planners on exactly this ground in "Lying and Politics," Crises of the Republic, pp. 1-47.


Kant, we can say that ideology stands to reason as common sense stands to judgment. In Kant, reflective judgment is a faculty which wants only to find a general rule-although not one that is easily statable in the form of a law-under which to subsume particular cases. Reason, by contrast, seeks "unconditioned totalities"; it takes premises drawn from experience and carries them beyond experience. It is, in principle, holis- tic and system-building. According to Arendt, ideologies, flowing from our capacity for logical reasoning, assume that a single premise is enough to enable us to comprehend all of reality. They make claims to total ex- planation of everything past, present and future. They are impervious to experience, contemptuous of factuality (OT, 350), and quite independent of the mutual interchange of equals.2

Epistemologically, whenever ideology supplants common sense, reality is "no longer experienced and understood in its own terms"; "ideological thinking becomes emancipated from the reality that we perceive with our five senses, and insists on a 'truer' reality concealed behind all per- ceptible things, dominating them from this place of concealment and requiring a sixth sense that enables us to become aware of it" (OT, 470- 71). Politically, Arendt links the replacement of common sense by ideology with the demise of freedom, in that people for whom the "reality of experience" no longer exists are "ideal subject[s] of totalitarian rule" (OT, 474). They are prepared to surrender their capacity for action, and they will endorse even the most shameful or anti-utilitarian policies if these are carried out in the name of the ideology.

As Arendt points out repeatedly, it is characteristic of ideologies like Nazism and Bolshevism to create whole classes of nonpersons (Jews or Kulaks, for example) supposed to be responsible for various evils and serving as fair game for everyone else. Such ideologies deprive persons of the right to exist not because of any specific deed they may have done, but because they belong to some category of people that has been singled out in toto as an "objective enemy." The element of personal responsibility for one's actions is entirely lacking in these mass condemnations. And it is here that we discern the vast gulf between ideology and common sense. An ideology may indeed express widely-held beliefs, but it does not flow from shared experience in action and from spirited discussion among citizens. In contrast to opinions, whose persuasive power rests on such experiences, ideologies are persuasive only in the deadly consistency of their logic. Experiences, after all, pertain to what people

20. See Ernst Vollrath, "Hannah Arendt and the Method of Political Thinking," Social Research 44 (1977): 173-175, for a short but insightful analysis of the destruction of a sense of reality by totalitarian regimes.


say, do or witness. But ideologies create distinctions of being which often fall wholly outside experience and must be determined by wild

pseudo-scientific procedures (OT, 468). Here I refer, for example, to Nazi treatises on how much "Jewish blood" a person must have to be considered a Jew, or Stalinist directives on how much land or livestock a peasant must own to be considered a Kulak. To exile one family to Siberia for owning four pigs while commending the family with two pigs as a pillar of socialism is a procedure inconsistent with common sense. Such procedures impose a pattern on the world that embodies arbitrary distinctions derived from some half-baked theory.

One might be tempted to identify Arendt's idea of common sense with the compelling force of custom and tradition in shaping attitudes. After all, what most people judge to be true is largely the result of socialization. It would seem then that close-knit, highly traditional communities would have the strongest, most unerring common sense, since

they do socialize their members according to a homogeneous pattern. But Arendt's support for anti-traditional, revolutionary movements

strongly suggests that the Gemeinschaft is not what she has in mind when

speaking of a highly developed common sense. The reason for this is not far to seek. The traditional Gemeinschaft was an apolitical community based on domination and subordination, an extended household of sorts characterized by the undisputed supremacy of a lord and the uncom-

plaining submission of his serfs. There was no trace of action here, since the peasant was not a free person, a citizen. We will not encounter common sense where people have not assumed responsibility for their own destinies, and where isonomy-the artificial legal equality of the public realm (OR, 23)-is absent.

Arendt seeks a way to bind people together politically without re- course to a nation or Volk.21 She thinks that the political association establishes itself in opposition to the private and as distinct from the social, and that it has its own independent sources of confraternity. Polit- ical common sense cannot arise until the power of the ancestral has been broken and men begin to discuss the meanings of the just and the good. In a community where the burden of tradition is so heavy that logos is silenced, common sense cannot emerge, because its very being presup- poses a modicum of disagreement or, if you will, dissensus.22 We might view common sense as the faculty which sets the perimeters within which

21. Schwartz, op. cit., maintains on rather thin evidence that Arendt favored eth- nically homogeneous communities and thought that "only those who are funda- mentally alike... can act together as equals in the public realm" (pp. 147, 156).

22. On this point see Canovan, "Distorted Communication," op. cit., pp. 111-112.


a political discussion can unfold. For example, it was a foregone conclusion at the American Constitutional Convention that the new order would have to be based on popular consent. The experience of colonial liberties, and that of the revolution itself, had made corporatist theories of government obsolete, even though debate was still often conducted in the language of English constitutionalism. American colonists were no longer dissenting English peasants. During the period since Jamestown, they had become citizens, and it would have been impossible to reim- pose European political forms on a people for whom politics had become, literally, a res publica.

Finally, common sense should be distinguished from public opinion,23 which in some ways is its opposite. Common sense is the living experience of intersubjectivity, while public opinion is a dead object of social scientific measurement and interpretation, presupposing no meaningful dialogue among citizens. Opinion research reveals nothing about "who" people are. It brings out only a jumble of disconnected observations, prejudices, and half-remembered newspaper editorials that supposedly constitute citizens' opinions. The "opinionated" individuals are repre- sented as isolated atoms, each with some subjective preference, such that a "public" opinion can be found when their preferences are tallied up and averaged together. The public here is just the sum of as many privates as there may be, like Rousseau's volonte de tous. But for Arendt, the differences between private and public is not merely a quan- titative one, a function of the number of heads you count or opinions you survey. It is a qualitative difference, a difference in the character and significance of the experience itself. Defining the public as a simple aggregation makes about as much sense to Arendt as placing a hundred people in a room, inside individual isolation booths, and calling that a public gathering (see HC, 53). Thus, public opinion is a contradiction in terms: neither does it register genuine opinions, nor is it truly public in character.

23. In his essay, "Judging-the Actor and the Spectator," Proceedings of "His- tory, Ethics, Politics: A Conference Based on the Work of Hannah Arendt" (New York: Empire State College, 1982), Richard Bernstein indirectly addresses this theme: "Individuals do not simply 'have' opinions, they form opinions.... Opinion formation is not a private activity performed by a solitary thinker.... [It] requires a political community of equals, the imagination to represent other viewpoints, and the courage to submit opinions to public exposure and test" (p. 148). See Arendt's own discussion of this point in Crises of the Republic: "if only ten of us are sitting around a table, each expressing his own opinion, each hearing the opinions of others, then a rational formation of opinion can take place through the exchange of equals" (p. 233).


IV. Common Sense as a Restraint on Barbarism

Having clarified the meaning of common sense, we are now ready to return to our original problem: how can common sense restrain a community from resorting to barbaric and inhuman policies and practices? In this connection, we should emphasize that common sense grows out of two layers of dialogue: a private, mental dialogue in which I formu- late some tentative position, and the public dialogue in which I exchange it with others. In the latter, I try to convince my fellow citizens to adopt my outlook. To be at all successful, I must first see the world through their eyes, provisionally accepting their viewpoints in my imagination in order better to advance my own. It is not enough simply to articulate my own interests and concerns. Unless I try to grasp other people's perspectives, I will not know what arguments are most likely to win them over. Thus, the dynamics of public interchange lead me to engage in

"representative thinking":

I form an opinion by considering a given issue from different view-

points, by making present to my mind the standpoints of those who are absent; that is, I represent them.... The more people's standpoints I have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and the better I can imagine how I would feel and think if I were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinion. (BPF, 241).

One result of this process is a Kantian "enlarged mentality" (MDT, 79; see also BPF, 220), which Arendt calls "the political mentality par excellence." 24 It is not the same as empathy, "as though I tried to be or feel like someone else." Instead, it involves "being and thinking in my own identity where actually I am not" (BPF, 241). Arriving at reasoned

opinion does, however, heighten my respect for the humanity of others. I may have little appreciation for their points of view, but in considering a matter from their perspectives I affirm their dignity as persons. Similarly, when I confront others in dialogue, listening to them explain and justify their outlooks on the world, it is hard for me to neglect their views or interests completely. In considering their positions, I confirm that my object is not to manipulate them but to understand what sep- arates us and what might bring us together.

24. Arendt observes: "It is this capacity for an 'enlarged mentality' that enables us to judge; as such, it was discovered by Kant..., though he did not recognize the political and moral implications of his discovery" (BPF, 241). See paragraph 40 of Kant's Critique of Judgment for a discussion of the "enlarged mentality."


The circumstances of public debate force us to construct a vocabulary with which to justify our egocentric goals before a wider audience. Where formerly there was solipsism, each person locked into an idiosyncratic perspective, through discourse we have generated a common sense of what is important in the world and how we should act together to achieve it. Likewise, since the attainment of these commonly-held goals requires people to enlist the aid of others outside their immediate circle, political ties of loyalty, trust and obligation spread throughout an acting community to supplement pre-existing social and biological bonds. These ties help citizens overcome feelings of impotence and isolation, and also en- hance their "specifically political" ability to judge,25 or to "see things ... in the perspective of all those who happen to be present" (BPF, 221) .26 Finally, in presenting their claims before a public audience, citizens de- velop a sense of proportion and self-restraint. Not all decisions will go their way; not all of their proposals will be accepted; schemes and viewpoints that affront the common sense of the collectivity will be dismissed with scorn. In the face of this, citizens tend to become more prudent and sober in their assessments and more willing to compromise on ends and means to win public support.

Closely tied to the production of common sense are the mechanisms of "distinction" and "emulation." "Everything alive," Arendt writes, "is made for appearance" and "has an urge to appear, to fit itself into the world of appearances by displaying . .itself as an individual" (LM I, 29). But of all living things, a human being alone is an Existenz or

"evolving identity." 27 and remains in a "state of becoming" throughout his or her life. My Existenz is formed by the varying ways in which I

appear as a worldly phenomenon to others when I act. And although I

may edit my thoughts and feelings, deciding "what is fit for appearance" (LM I, 31), it is beyond my power to "calculate beforehand" the way I will appear (HC, 192). The daimon displayed in action-the "who" that "accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind" (HC, 179-80)-remains forever hidden from the agent's sight. The Delphic command is thus unfulfillable; people can-

25. For two provocative analyses of the relationship between thinking and judging, see George Kateb, "Freedom and Worldliness in the Thought of Hannah Arendt," Political Theory 5 (1977): 170-173, and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, "Re- flections on Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind," Political Theory 10 (1982): 295-301.

26. This, of course, is Arendt's restatement of Kant's instruction to "put ourselves in thought in the place of everyone else" when judging.

27. Arendt's most detailed discussion of the meaning of Existenz occurs in "What is Existenz Philosophy?," Partisan Review 13 (1946): 34-56.


not know themselves. They can only know others and be known by them. The most one can hope for is some reflection of oneself in the eyes of one's peers. And the more witnesses there are, the more reflections come into view.

Opportunities to see and be seen are multiplied in public settings when common sense is generated. Now there are more people with whom to interact than in private life, and the stakes of appearing are correspondingly higher. A totally private existence provides few significant occa- sions on which an individual's "valid personality" (MDT, 73) can be shown. The "who" in this case is invisible and even unreal, because it exists only when it is manifested in the world. Arendt quotes approv- ingly from the Discourses on Davila, where John Adams writes that "To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable," a source of shame (OR, 63-4). Our terror of perpetual anonymity and obscurity is, existentially speaking, what leads us to act in public. In more affirma- tive terms, we have a thirst for self-revelation, a passion for distinction.

One might suppose that this inchoate, quasi-egotistical passion would unleash a pursuit of glory at any price, but Arendt demurs on two counts. In the first place, any action that endangers the continued existence of an acting community would be utterly self-defeating, for it is only within this setting that the passion for distinction can be fulfilled and its fulfillment remembered. Second, Arendt submits that if we love the world and enjoy the company of our fellows, we will seek their good esteem rather than their ostracism or scorn. Distinction then gives rise to "emulation," a desire not only to be noticed but "to excel" (OR, 116), which can prompt even people of dubious moral character to act in public-spirited ways. Again drawing on Adams, Arendt argues that the fact that they are watched while acting ("spectemur agendo") dis- inclines actors to do beastly things. The audience does not simply witness action but contributes layers of judgment, meaning and interpretation to each act. These latter, in turn, affect the self-understanding and hence the future actions of the performer, but without jeopardizing choice or freedom. Emulation at one and the same time ratifies the Existenz of actors and serves as a check on their tyrannical tendencies.

With its satellite phenomena of distinction and emulation, common sense fosters politically desirable traits of mind and character within an acting community. It is not a panacea for political ills-nothing is-but it is a sort of prophylactic. For example, Arendt laments that common sense is "helpless" once "ideological supersense" has infected a community (OT, 458).28 However, common sense can prevent ideological

28. See Vollrath, op. cit., pp. 174-175 and 179.


thinking from gaining a foothold among citizens. Ideology, after all, flourishes precisely when people are cut off from worldly talk and thrown back on the logical reasoning powers of their own minds. In a community held together by common sense, one would find instances of cruelty, certainly, but little organized brutality; acts of violence, but not death camps. It is noteworthy that Arendt attributes the Nazi-occupied Danes' non-violent resistance against anti-Semitic policies to the existence of a public space within which common sense could emerge rather than to any superior collective virtue. Conversely, the lack of public space, in her reading, foreordained the outbreak of pogroms in the cozy Gemein- schaften of eastern Europe during the same period (EJ, 171-75, 190- 205). In the Danish case, the generation and display of common sense remarkably led many members of the Nazi occupation force to sabotage directives from Berlin:

They themselves apparently no longer looked upon the extermina- tion of a whole people as a matter of course. They had met resistance based on principle, and their 'toughness' had melted like butter in the sun, they had even been able to show a few timid be- ginnings of genuine courage. (EJ, 175)

When such examples are multiplied, we begin to grasp why, in Arendt's view, the connection between common sense and humanitas is not an unquestioned and untested axiom but an induction from experience.

V. Two Criticisms of Arendt's Theory of Action

Of the many criticisms directed against Arendt's work, two stand out as especially serious. The first takes off from her rather shocking asser- tion that action, in contrast to mere behavior, is to be judged on the basis of its greatness and gloriousness and not according to moral standards (HC, 205). But if we cannot legitimately discriminate between morally good and morally bad political acts, then why should we not celebrate the "glory" of Mussolini's march on Rome as unhesitatingly as we would support his overthrow? From this angle, Arendt's theory of action may appear to be faulty because it fails to supply criteria that would allow us to condemn barbarism as barbarism. Pushed to an extreme, the accusation is that the theory itself may have latent totalitarian implications, bearing a disturbing similarity to the fascist devaluation of private experience and cult of "deeds" as against thought.29

29. For two presentations of this argument see Kateb, op. cit., pp. 163-168, and O'Sullivan, "Politics, Totalitarianism and Freedom," op. cit., pp. 197-198.


In dealing with this criticism, let us first note that Arendt does not apply moral rules to political action because in her view they foster con- formity and predictability in human relationships, thereby stifling spon- taneity. Moral categories and constraints encourage the routinization of life, the transformation of politics into administration, and that of humanity into the passive object of administrative control, all of which she dreads. Correspondingly, her writings reveal a certain contempt for theories and practices that would reduce politics to the allocation of scarce resources or distribution of tangible benefits. To some degree she tries to extricate politics from calculations of utility and even fairness, empha- sizing instead its power to preserve the openness of the future. It should be clear that this position is not unique to Arendt. It may have affinities to fascist deed-worship, but it also has modern adherents at various points along the political spectrum: Sartre and Lenin on the left, Tocque- ville and Weber in the center, Nietzsche and Sorel on the right.

One could probably find isolated quotations from extreme fascists which sound much like what Arendt could have written. It is important, however, that we look closely at their respective contexts instead of allowing ourselves to be seduced by similarities that may be merely formal. The romantic and fascist ideal of the "deed" had a very different meaning and frame of reference from those of Arendt's "action." In Sorel's case, as Arendt herself observes (CR, 166-69), the origins must be sought in the nineteenth century "philosophy of life" and in his own anti-intellectualism. He saw history as unfolding between extremes of elan and decadence, and was convinced that political deeds rather than detached analysis would restore militance, resolve, and heroism to our mediocre bourgeois age. Mussolini and his apologists adopted some of their rhetoric from Sorel, but praised action for action's sake also because their doctrines were so vague, inconsistent, and unappealing to common sense that fascist speakers could hardly defend them in any other way.

These theories of the deed must also be seen in the context of fascism's attack on modernity as a whole, and especially on the complex legacy of the Enlightenment: egalitarianism, political freedom, the belief in human autonomy and rationality. To this inheritance the fascists opposed a thoroughgoing irrationalism in which thought and speech were seen as impediments to action, mere chatter that sapped one's vital forces. (Mussolini used to tell his followers: "Feel, don't think.") Moreover, the actions people did take were not to be construed as confirming human autonomy; rather, the irrational forces of life, nationhood and race loomed overwhelmingly large in comparison to the puny purposes and aspirations of the agents themselves. The identity of people as unique,


distinct individuals was never the existential point at issue, for example, at fascist mass rallies. The latter were intended to evoke gut-level re- sponses and inculcate identical ideological reflexes in citizens, not to persuade them rationally or to stimulate the dialogic give-and-take between individuals that results in a "common sense" of political reality.

These pseudo-biological and irrationalist ideas have little in common with the substance of Arendt's arguments. In her usage, action is almost inextricably linked to logos, the power to speak meaningfully about what we do; it is the capacity that distinguishes and individualizes us, not an affirmation of any transpersonal absolute. In fact, Arendt finds in the "life" metaphor, and in the practical consequences drawn from it, a phil- osophic equivalent of the tendency of modern industry to transform work into labor, product into process (HC, 117). Far from being a return to vital, atavistic instincts, fascist "life philosophy" is simply an unreflec- tive and confused echo of the most modern of social transformations.

A foe of the conservative romanticism from which fascism grew, Arendt counts herself a spiritual descendant of Aristotle and Kant. We see throughout her writings a passionate commitment to the principles of freedom, human rights, and individual autonomy, the power of which, she believes, is slowly draining out because of their false association with unrelated experiences (for instance, labor). In Arendt's writing the language of action and glory is meant to revive those classical and En- lightenment ideals; in fascism the same terms are employed to subvert them.

A related criticism of her theory of action refers to its alleged insen- sitivity to the problem of social justice. In concentrating on the existential dimension of politics, Arendt's theory may be too formalistic. It tends to neglect the substantive concerns of political actors that give content to public debate. Quite apart from the revelation of the self which may shine through their actions, must not people also concern themselves with more traditional questions, such as that of justice? If common sense is intended as a sort of amoral substitute for morality, shouldn't there be some plausible connection between common sense and justice, as there is between morality and justice?

The initial temptation is to say simply that Arendt would deny the necessity, perhaps even the desirability, of such a link. For her the purpose of political life is to create and maintain a space in which people can act. Justice is an issue that often appears on this stage, but we should not confuse the stage itself with the drama being played out on it. As a corollary, Arendt would contend that an association could conceivably resolve problems of social justice and human want and yet not achieve a thriving public life. The prospect of a consumer utopia in which in-


equality is minimized, abundance for all guaranteed, and labor time cut to a few hours a day, seems not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. Yet it could as easily turn out to be a "brave new world" as a free republic.

Nevertheless, even though Arendt would insist on the distinction between public freedom and social justice, she might also point out the possible relationship between them. To treat others unjustly-to condemn them by action or forebearance to ignorance, poverty and suffering-is done most easily if they are excluded altogether from the public world. Then we can convince ourselves that they are not human beings equal to us, but naturally inferior or brutish, and hence deserving of their lot. We learn not to "see" them as people because they do not really "appear" in public. In the U.S., for example, most whites only began to "see" blacks as people a few decades ago, around the time of the first civil rights demonstrations. These latter were a powerful affirmation of public freedom which both manifested and helped to create a common sense of our race problem. Through them, the perspective of black citizens on American life-brutal police, vicious dogs, cattle prods, unjust laws-began to receive a hearing, and came to be the perspective of many whites as well.

In other words, our moral judgment about the outrage of segregation required, as a necessary precondition, the creation of a public space and a common sense of what segregation really meant. After all, the moral principles had always been there. To apply them to a group suffering injustice required that its members first achieve political visibility and recognition, that we see them as agents like ourselves and not simply as a "background," physically visible but not included in society's common sense. Thus, Arendt would insist that the problems of social justice and political freedom are logically and experientially quite distinct. But she would also suggest that a claim to justice is not likely to be acknowl- edged unless and until the claimants appear on a public stage. Their demands to be recognized as political actors and equals, in fact, are demands to which Arendt gives primacy over all others.30

VI. Conclusion

In sum, the best control mechanism for action-one that simultaneously flows from the acting experience and restrains its excesses-is a certain

30. See Arendt's controversial essay, "Reflections on Little Rock," Dissent 6 (1959): equality is the "innermost principle" of the body politics (p. 51), in which realm it "originates" (p. 50); legitimately, in fact, "government can only act in the name of equality" (p. 53).


kind of speech. Common sense, needless to say, will not eliminate all the risks inherent in action; no remedy could possibly work in every case without jeopardizing the very possibility of action itself. But for common sense to serve its purpose well, certain preconditions must be met, and Arendt's grave concern is that the modern world supplies an inhospitable environment for them.

Specifically, common sense is vulnerable on two fronts. First, it relies on the historical resonance of language, that is, the ability of language to evoke an entire tradition and the agreement crystallized in it. Put differently, common sense requires that words evoke the experience of those who gave them their meaning. When words are turned into slo- gans or public relations gimmicks by mass culture, or are squeezed and straitjacketed by the "operational definitions" of social science, their experiential, historical dimension disappears, and the common sense sedimented in them gradually crumbles. The inability to agree on meanings does not prove that all problems are merely "semantic." It betokens instead the loss of common sense, the living experience of plurality that once gave words their vital content and significance. When ten people have ten completely different ideas about what a word means, it is al- ready a dead letter and means nothing at all.

Second, common sense is vulnerable in regard not only to its sensible- ness but its commonality. If long-term societal trends, or the conscious policies of dictatorial or totalitarian regimes, can split people apart, isolate them, and destroy their public space, then common sense cannot remain unimpaired. Numerous studies attest to the transformation in our social intercourse.31 The typical older-bourgeois pattern of private reading and corresponding coupled with public discussion in clubs, salons, and cafes is no longer the norm. Group activities and sports, movie-going and television-watching appear to be the dominant forms of conviviality, all alike characterized by the near absence of sustained conversation, the thing that produces common sense.

Unlike many of her contemporaries in political science, Hannah Arendt considered it the tragedy of our age that ordinary citizens were preoccupied with intimate and social matters to the neglect of the res publica. A consistent critic of pluralist suppositions, she tried to demon- strate that direct democracy is to be welcomed, not feared as the har- binger of totalitarian mobilization.32 If common people have sometimes

31. See, for example, Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Vintage Books, 1978) and Jiirgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (Berlin: Luchterhand, 1962).

32. For a discussion of Arendt's views on representative democracy see Kateb,


embraced ideologies and movements seeking to destroy freedom, it is not because of any inherent susceptibility on their part, but rather because they have come to feel superfluous and invisible, excluded sys- tematically from those activities which make life meaningful and com- prehensible. Consequently, the answer to the problems of our time cannot lie in yet further privatization, nor only in economic reform, even if some of it might be desirable (CR, 214). Arendt would readmit ordinary people into the political arena not as casters of annual ballots for remote candidates, recipients of interest-group benefits, or statistics in an opinion survey, but as active citizens empowered to make important decisions about our collective life. To this end she thought we must re- structure our politics, opening up a multiplicity of public space in which people can appear and generate common sense among themselves.

op. cit., pp 158-160, and his more lengthy analysis in "Arendt and Representative Democracy," Proceedings of "History, Ethics, Politics," op. cit., pp. 115-123. See also Sheldon Wolin, "Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the Political," in the same Proceedings, pp. 88-91.

common sense & political barbarism in the theory of hannah arendt

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