Unpredictable yet Guided, Amoral yet Normative: Arendt on Principled Action

Wolfhart Totschnig, Northwestern University

Action, as opposed to labor and work, is unpredictable and not subject to moral standards. So says Arendt in The Human Condition.1 Her point is quite simple. When we intervene in our community, setting out to change the status quo, be it locally or on a larger political stage, we cannot foresee the consequences of our deeds. We have to accept that we do not know where our initiative will lead. Also, we must not feel constrained by established moral norms, since to set out to change the status quo means precisely to call such norms into question, to break through the commonly accepted and reach into the extraordinary.2 Arendts readers have responded to these claims in broadly three different ways. Some have drawn what seems to be the obvious conclusion, namely that action is for her erratic and unrestrained, and they have criticized her for this view (e.g., Kateb, Villa). Others have tried to weaken the said claims and thus avoid the unpalatable conclusion by looking for the (hidden) moral foundation to her theory (e.g., Benhabib, Passerin dEntrves). Still others have sought to steer clear of either of these options because they see in the unpredictability and unruliness of action the effect of freedom rather than the sign of arbitrariness and hence something to be afrmed rather than resisted (e.g., Canovan, Honig). In the present paper, I seek to show that the key to resolving this dissension among Arendts readers is her claim that action is guided by principles. I contend, that is, that it is the oversight or misinterpretation of this aspect of her theory that has led to the disagreement. Only with the idea that action is guided by principles, I will argue, can we make sense of Arendts claims in The Human Condition, for it is with this idea that Arendt shows that there is something that guides action despite its unpredictability and unruliness.

My intervention vis--vis the three groups of scholars will thus be the following: Vis--vis the rst group, I will point out that, thanks to its principled character, Arendtian action is neither erratic nor unrestrained. Vis--vis the second, I will argue that Arendts principles are not to be understood as moral principles, even though they play the normative role of moral principles. And vis--vis the third, I will emphasize that the unpredictability and unruliness of action can be embraced as the concomitant of human freedom only if one insists that action is guided by principles, for without such guidance it would indeed, as the rst group alleges, be erratic and unrestrained. In short, I will complement the reading of the third group while amending the reading of the second group and thereby dispel the rst groups reason for concern.

Introduction: Labor, work, and action

The topic of this paper is how action differs from labor and work in the way in which it is guided. I will therefore begin with a general introduction of these three notions. In The Human Condition, Arendt distinguishes between three basic kinds of activitylabor, work, and action. They correspond, Arendt explains, to the three basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man, which are life itself, worldliness, and plurality.3 Let me spell out the distinction. Life, rst, is a basic condition of our existence in the sense that we depend on the functioning of our bodies. By labor, Arendt means the set of activities by which we respond to this condition, that is, by which we produce the goodsrst and foremost foodneeded to sustain our biological substrate. Worldliness, second, is a basic condition in the sense that we seek to build a world to live in, a world which protects us from the forces of nature. By work, Arendt means the set of activities by which we erect such a world, that is, by which we fabricate objects meant to withstand these forces. Plurality, nally, is a basic condition in the sense that we are not alone in the world and hence need to gure out how to live together. By action, then, Arendt means the deeds by which we shape and organize our coexistence. The paradigmatic locus for action is therefore the domain of politics. Following from their rootedness in these conditions, the three kinds of activity differ along a series of dimensions.

First, they possess different degrees of durability. The fruits of labor are perishable. They are soon gone, either by being consumed, as they are meant to be, or by rotting away. They are part of the natural cycle of generation and corruption, of production and consumption.4 The objects fashioned by work, by contrast, are lasting, they are built to withstand the forces of natural decay, to resist the cycle of generation and consumption. Still, they are not indestructible. At one point, they break down and have to be repaired or replaced.5 Actions, nally, are indestructible in the sense that they are irrevocable. A deed amongst our fellow citizens, once performed, cannot be undone.6 It can be forgiven, to be sure, but it cannot be effaced such that things are as if it had never happened. Second, the three kinds of activity differ on the axis of monotony versus originality. Labor is repetitive, just like the cycle of life that it serves. It attends to natural needs that are unremitting and unchanging.7 (Of course, the labor process develops in the course of historywe only need to think of the dramatic transformation brought about by the Industrial Revolutionyet it does not do so by itself. Its evolution is the accomplishment of work, of the instruments and machines devised by homo faber, by the human being qua toolmaker. If we were nothing but laboring animals, the process of production and consumption would remain ever the same.8 ) Action, by contrast, is innovative. Through the deeds by which we intervene in our community, we seek to change the status quo.9 Otherwisethat is, if we were content with the way things arewe would have no reason to act. Work, lastly, takes a position in between here, as it does on the score of durability. As just indicated, it can also be innovative, namely when it invents and builds new kinds of objects, in particular new tools. Unlike action, however, it is not inherently so. It mostly consists in the replacement or multiplication of things already known. Also, it only fabricates new objects, whereas action creates new relationships and institutions. Third, the three kinds of activity are characterized by different modes of aggregation. Labor is a collective affair, in the sense that the subject of the life process is not so much the individual but the family, or society, or mankind at large.10 This is to say that, when it comes to the cycle of production and consumption, the agent is part of a larger, organic whole. Work, by contrast, is the paradigm of individual activity. The classic picture is that of an agent who forms the plan to make an object and deploys the means to realize it. (It may be, of course, that more than one person is involved in the fabrication. This does not make the activity any less individual, though, for there normally 3

is in such cases one person who directs the others and is responsible for the outcome, such that the project can be said to be hers, and hers alone.) Action, nally, is plural. It occurs among the plurality of human beings who need to gure out how to live together. It takes place between people. To act is to act with or against each other, to act in concert or in competition. If we lived isolated livesthink of the Rousseauian state of naturethere would be neither the need nor the opportunity for action. Let me say a little bit more about the contrast between labor and action on this score. What is the difference between collectivity and plurality? By collective, Arendt means a unied whole, a whole that is governed by a single interest, namely the interest that arises from the necessities of life, the interest to reproduce and grow.11 In one word, a collective is an organic whole. The life process constitutes, and proceeds in, such a collectivity, and the individual qua laboring animal is dened by its place and role therein. By plurality, on the other hand, Arendt means a multiplicity that is not a whole, a multiplicity that is not a unit organized into parts. Put differently, a plurality is a manifold of entities whose interrelations are not xed. (If those interrelations were xed, we would be dealing with an organized whole.) We human beings are such a plurality in the sense that the way in which we relate to each other, the way in which we live together, is not carved in stone, or coded in our genes, or otherwise predetermined.12 When it comes to the question of how to share the world we have built, as opposed to the question of how to secure our survival, there is not one single interest that governs us but a multitude of different standpoints that need to be reconciled. This is why we need to act. Since the terms of our coexistence have not been settled for us, we need to establish them ourselves.13 The fourth aspect to be highlighted is that the three kinds of activity exhibit different forms of temporality. Labor is circular. It has neither beginning nor end, for it leads back to where it came from. Production is followed by consumption, which necessitates further production. Work, on the other hand, is linear. It has a beginning and an end, the conception and the completion of the object. Action, lastly, is also linear. It has a clear beginning, the deed by which a new project is initiated. Unlike work, however, it does not have an end, for an action gives rise to further actions, it inspires coactions and provokes reactions. That is, it sets off a process that is potentially innite.14 This temporal aspect can be illustrated with reference to the categories of means and end.15 The labor process is characterized by the fact that it does not admit of such a distinction. Do we eat so that we can labor or labor so 4

that we can eat? Do we quench our needs in order to regenerate our forces or, conversely, exercise our forces in order to be able to quench our needs? The answer, Arendt points out, is both. We produce in order to consume and consume in order to produce. The means is the end and the end is the means, which, of course, is just another way of saying that these categories are inapplicable here. It is in the domain of work, the domain of fabrication, that this distinction is at home. The maker of an object has an end in view, the thing to be fabricated, and looks for the means, the material and the tools, to realize it. The end really is the end of the activity; the completion of the object concludes the fabrication. (To be sure, the process may beand in fact often isrestarted to make more objects of the same kind. Yet if it is thus repeated, it is so for reasons that are extraneous to it. Unlike labor, work is not inherentlythat is, not necessarilyrepetitive.) And the means really are just means; the material and the tools are there for the object they serve to build, and not vice versa. As for action, it does not lend itself to the categories of means and end either. It does not have a well-dened end, and where there is no such end, we cannot speak of means. Let me sum up the preceding paragraph by highlighting the connection to the question of temporality. Work allows for the distinction between means and end because it is linear and nite. It has an end and looks for the means to get there. Labor and action, by contrast, do not come to an end, the former because of its circularity and the latter because, although linear, it is potentially innite, or, in a word, open-ended. And in the absence of an end, we cannot treat some part of the process as a means. In a repetitive circle and in an innite series, every stage is just as much an end as it is a means, which is to say that it is not a means properly speaking. The last point of distinction between labor, work, and action that I want to highlight is the one that is the focus of this paper. It is closely linked to the aspect of temporality and the applicability of the means-end dichotomy. What impels and guides the activitythat is, what gets (and keeps) it going and gives it a direction to go indiffers from kind to kind. Labor is driven by the necessities of life, which bring it back to where it came from.16 Consumption necessitates production, which necessitates consumption, and so on. Work, by contrast, is not propelled by necessity but done by design. It is motivated by and directed toward the goal which it has set itself and upon whose completion it comes to rest.17 Action, nally, is not aimed at an end but inspired by a beginning, by the principle to which it has dedicated itself. It is not about reaching a target but about manifesting an idea. 5

The difference between labor and work in this respect is evident enough. The former is compulsory and cyclical, the latter deliberate and goal-directed. The contrast between work and action, however, is in need of explication. What does it mean to say that action is principled rather than goal-directed? Is the adoption of a principle so different from the determination of an end? And do these two ways of being guided not belong together rather than stand in opposition? Does action not also envisage and pursue goals, besidesor actually for the sake ofthe principle(s) to which it is committed? Before I set out to address these questions, I need to emphasize that the preceding overview of Arendts distinction of labor, work, and action is not comprehensive. There are important aspects I have not touched on, for example the history that Arendt tells of the shifting demarcation of and hegemony between the three kinds of activity, or their localization along the private/public axis. Arendts conceptual triad also provokes a host of fundamental questions which I do not discuss. Do the notions of labor, work, and action exhaustively describe the realm of human activity, or are there doings that fall outside the tripartition? Are the boundaries clear-cut, or do we nd hybrid forms? Are the three kinds of activity tied to our nature, or merely to our current situation? Can we imagine, for example, a humanity that does not need to labor any more, or that has lost the capacity for action? All these issues I have to leave aside. What I want to retain is a general point that is not affected by them, namely that human agency cannot be captured by a single model. A political intervention does not work in the same way as the fabrication of an object or the production of means of sustenance.

1 The unpredictability of action

Let me zoom in, then, on one of the aspects I outlined, the particular way in which action is guided. I want to approach the subject indirectly, via a puzzle elicited by Arendts observation that action is unpredictable. Before I can get to the puzzle, though, I need to explain the observation. Why should action be unpredictable? The answer to this question lies in the incalculability of the realm of interpersonal affairs in which the activity unfolds. Action, we saw, is inherently plural. The agent acts with or against other agents, agents who will not simply yield to the initiative but rather react to it. And just as the initiatory act was unpredictable to these others, their reactions are unpredictable to the initia6

tor. Thus, the undertaking immediately develops a dynamic of its own. Action acts into a medium where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is the cause of new processes. We are therefore, Arendt notes, just as much the sufferers as the doers of our actions, surprised by the consequences of what we do, at the mercy of the developments that we ourselves have launched.18 We see now why action is unpredictable. When we intervene in our community, we cannot foresee the outcome of our initiative. So the puzzle is this: If the actor cannot know where the endeavor will lead, what guides her in her doings? Apparently, it cannot be the vision of a goal, understood as a welldened state of affairs that is to be brought about. For, if there is no way of knowing what the outcome of the undertaking will be, that outcome cannot be set up as a goal. Hence, the actor must be guided by something else. There is an obvious objection to this line of reasoning. What I just said seems to imply that action cannot have a goal. This conclusion appears to be absurd, though. Does an agent participating in a political project not have both a proximate goal, namely to take the project a step further, and an ultimate goal, namely to create (what she believes to be) a better world? The point must be admitted. Indeed, when engaged in action, we normally envision a goal, a state of affairs that we would like to achieve. That is, we normally have an idea of where we want to be heading. Arendt admits as much when she notes that motives and aims are important factors in every single act.19 Remember, though, that I am asking what impels and guides the activity. The claim to be made, then, is that in action, unlike in work, the agents goals do not play this role, not that action does not involve goals at all. In other words, the contention is that, while the agent will aim at a particular objective, the wish to reach that objective is not what actually gets and keeps her going. So how does this claim follow from the unpredictability of the activity? The crucial point is that, because of that unpredictability, the actor never reaches the target that she envisages. No action, Arendt notes, ever attains its intended goal. We [n]ever achieve anything wholly according to plan.20 (We may specify that the reason why it is not attained is different for the two goals I have distinguished, the proximate and the ultimate goal. The former could be attained but is always missed, while the latter is inherently out of reach the better world we seek to create is never perfectedand thus always fallen short of.) It is easy to see that, therefore, the actors objectives cannot be what impels and guides the activity. If they were having this role, people would soon desist from acting, out of frustration over the fact that they never achieve what 7

they strive for. In other words, we would in this case have to say that action always fails, and it would then be puzzling that people act at all. An important question and two possible objections need to be addressed before I can proceed. The question is the following: If the actors goals are not what really drives the activity, what then is their role? In which sense are they, as Arendt says, important factors in the process of action? A full response to this question can only be given after I have discussed in detail what it is that impels and guides action, which will happen in the third section. For now, let me note that the goals that the actor sets herself are always provisional. Given the unpredictability of the environment in which it unfolds, action must be prepared to change its aim. The latter varies and depends upon the changing circumstances of the world.21 This is why, for action, non-achievement of its goal does not in itself constitute a failure. It is but the occasion to reassess and modify the goal. The rst objection concerns Arendts assertion that action never reaches what it aims at. It may seem that this claim is an exaggeration. Do we not sometimes succeed in bringing about the state of affairs we envisagedthe more proximate the goal in question, the more often? A way to respond on Arendts behalf would be to emphasize once again that action is directed toward other people who are themselves actors, such that it encounters unpredictability from the very outset. Since those with or against whom we act may react in so many different ways, we never get exactly what we hoped for, be the goal as modest and close-by as it may. This response does not sufce to parry the objection, though. The objector might rejoin that, at least sometimes and to a certain degree, we can foresee how people will react to what we do. Arendt is in fact the last person to deny that. In The Human Condition, she notes and laments the extent to which human behavior has in modern society become conformist and thus calculable.22 However, she does not thereby intend to qualify her claim about actions unpredictability. What she wants to assert, rather, is that action has become increasingly rare.23 Arendt thus distinguishes between action and behavior. By the latter term she means the customary ways in which people comport themselves in society, while the former is reserved for the initiatives by which these ways are interrupted and reshaped. Thus narrowly understood, action is inherently unpredictable, for an unusual deed is likely to elicit unusual responses. The second objection to be put on the table is, in a way, the reverse of the rst. Actions unpredictability is supposed to constitute a distinguishing feature vis--vis labor and work. The latter, it is assumed, are predictable, labor 8

by virtue of its circularity and work by virtue of its goal-directedness. I have addressed the objection that action may not be as unpredictable as Arendt claims. One may, conversely, object that labor and work are not as predictable as suggested. Does the project of fabricating an object not often miss its goal as well, for example because the intended object turns out to be ill-conceived, or because the tools break down or prove to be unsuitable? Or does the labor process not often fail to produce what is needed for sustenance, through human fault or because nature does not do its part?24 It can hardly be denied. These observations do not invalidate Arendts point, however. When work fails to fabricate its object and when labor fails to close the circle of production and consumption, we are dealing with precisely thatfailures. The activity does not achieve what it was meant to achieve. There was a reasonable prospect of attaining the goal, but things by error or mischance went otherwise. When action does not reach its goal, by contrast, that was to be expected. And the endeavor does not thereby fail, since reaching the goal is not what it is ultimately about. So I nally come to the big question. What is action all about? What is it that impels and guides the activity? Arendts answer to this question, I want to show, is principles. Through the deeds by which we intervene in our community, we seek to shape that community according to the principles to which we are committed. These principles are what impels and guides us. We are impelled by the desire to implement them in the world we live in, to realize them, to (re)create our community on their basis. And we are guided by them in the sense that we choose and (if need be) change our goals in their light.

2 The charge of immorality

Before investigating the idea that action is guided by principles more closely, I want to make a rst note on the secondary literature. Arendts conception of action has by some commentatorsthe rst group of readers mentioned at the beginningbeen charged with amorality. I want to show that this charge is unjustied. It ignores actions principled character and hence relies on a misinterpretation of Arendts conception. The most prominent and most insistent of this group of critics is George Kateb. In his much-read book on Arendts philosophy (1984) as well as in his article on her conception of action in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah 9

Arendt (2000), he accuses her of celebrating immorality, of playing with re.25 Katebs reproach is based on Arendts remark in The Human Condition that action can be judged only by the criterion of greatness [and not by moral standards] because it is in its nature to break through the commonly accepted and reach into the extraordinary.26 Vis--vis this claim, Kateb insists that greatness cannot be its own morality, that we need to reintroduce into Arendts conception the respect for moral limits.27 Focusing on this one passage from The Human Condition, Kateb fails to recognize that Arendt does introduce something that plays the role of moral precepts. Action is guided by principles, she asserts, not onlyand not primarily by the criterion of greatness. (The question why this aspect is not mentioned in The Human Conditionand in the passage highlighted by Kateb in particular will be addressed in the fth section.) Kateb does not outright overlook Arendts notion of principles. He discusses it in both of the cited writings. However, he likens a principle to a role or mask one assumes and thus makes it into something idiosyncratic.28 He thereby divests it of its main function, which is to guide a plurality of actors in their joint undertaking. Because of this misunderstanding, he fails to see in it the answer to his objection. I would like to mention one more exponent of the rst group of commentators, namely Dana Villa. In his case, the connection between the neglect of the notion of principles and the charge of immorality is clearly visible. Referring to the same passage from The Human Condition as Kateb (and citing the latter in this context), Villa remarks in his study on Arendt and Heidegger that the moral vacuity of greatness leaves Arendts conception of political action all too vulnerable to charges of subjectivism or arbitrariness. Accordingly, he calls for some ground or justication for action beyond display and virtuosity.29 In a brief endnote attached to this passage, he then acknowledges that to some degree, Arendt anticipates these objections to her theatrical conception of politics, appealing to principles as nonfoundational referents for action.30 He thus recognizes the crucial role that the idea that action is guided by principles plays in Arendts theory. It is therefore all the more surprising that he does not put this idea to the fore and subject it to close scrutiny. In particular, he does not specify why, in his view, it mitigates the said objections only to some degree. It must be noted that the neglect with which the notion of principles has been met on the part of Kateb and Villa is understandable. For one, the idea does not really occupy a prominent position in Arendts writings, if measured by the number of words spent on it. While we nd it throughout her oeuvre, 10

from the early Ideology and Terror31 via What is Freedom?32 and On Revolution33 to the fragments of the abandoned, posthumously edited Introduction into Politics34 and the unnished, also posthumous Life of the Mind35 , Arendt dedicates only a couple of pages at a time to it. Also, the idea is admittedly rather obscure.36 It provokes a host of questions to which Arendts terse remarks do not readily provide an answer. How do the principles that inform action differ from goals and other motives? How do they guide the actors in their undertaking? Where do they come from, and on what grounds are they adopted? To answer these questions and, more generally, to examine more closely Arendts idea that action is guided by principles is the task to which I now turn.

3 The notion of principles

Let me begin with a couple of examples, to make what preceded and what will follow more tangible. Arendt consistently cites Montesquieu as inspiration when introducing the notion of principles, and she also adduces the examples that he gave.37 Montesquieu meant by principle that which inspires and sustains a certain form of governmentvirtue in the case of a republic, honor in a monarchy, fear in a tyranny. In the Introduction into Politics, Arendt notes that we may add to this list fame, as we know it from the world of Homer; or freedom, as we nd it in Athens classical period; or justice; or even equality, as championed in modern democracies.38 What Arendt takes Montesquieu to propose is that these principles are what guides action in the respective polities. Just as the democrat is inspired by the principle of equality, the monarchist is guided by the idea of honor, or the Homeric hero by the idea of fame. Arendt does not subscribe entirely to Montesquieus theory, though. In The Life of the Mind, she remarks that [Montesquieus] enumeration, guided by the oldest distinction between forms of government (as the rule of one, of a few, of the best, or of all), is of course pitifully inadequate to the rich diversity of human beings living together on the earth.39 We may assume that this still holds for the extended list offered in the Introduction into Politics. In fact, we must assume that it holds for any list that pretends to be exhaustive. There cannot be a complete enumeration of adoptable principles because human beings have the capacity to make a new beginningthe capacity, that is, to invent and enact new principles. In other words, Arendt takes from Montesquieu 11

the idea that action is guided by principles but jettisons the assumption that there is a denumerable set of such principles and a corresponding set of possible forms of government. In fact, the disagreement with Montesquieu goes deeper than that. For Arendt, action, along with its principles, does not only and not primarily pertain to the sphere of government. It often takes place outside or against this sphere. Let me cite from her writings two examples of principled action that illustrate this point. In The Human Condition, Arendt refers to the early Christian community which, she remarks, was held together by the principle of charity.40 And in On Revolution, she talks about the actors of the American Revolution who were inspired by the interconnected principle of mutual promise and common deliberation.41 So what do all these examplesthose from Montesquieu and Arendts ownhave in common? What characterizes a principle in Arendts sense? I want to point out ve aspects, four in this section and one in the next.42 They have already been mentioned or alluded to, and they are all closely interconnected. To begin with, the principle is what impels the activity. It is what rst move[s] human beings to act.43 Action springs from a principle, as Arendt puts it in What is Freedom.44 What she means by that, I propose, is that action starts with the adoption of a principle. When human beings act, they do so for the sake of the principle(s) to which they are committed. They seek to realize these principles, to make them manifest, to put them into effect. In other words, its principle is what action is about.45 Then, the principle is what guides the activity. Action chooses (and changes) its goals according to the principle which impels it. We are now in the position to see why these goals are always provisional. Action sets its goal depending on what appears to be in the given circumstances the best way to realize its principlejustice, equality, charity, whatever it may be. It may later turn out that there is a better waybecause the circumstances have changed, or because the original assessment as to what is the best way was mistakenor it may be that another way needs to be found after the original goal was missed, and then the actor will not hesitate to reorient herself. The aim of action varies and depends upon the changing circumstances of the world; to recognize the aim is not a matter of freedom, but of right or wrong judgment.46 That is, action does not choose freely its goal as work chooses freely which object it is going to fabricate. Rather, it discerns its goal in the light of its principle, and this, Arendt emphasizes, is a question of judgment and not of

12

choice. It is the principle that is freely chosen, and the goal then follows from it. We also see now why for action missing the goal is not tantamount to failure. When action is unable to attain its intended goal, it reorients itself, it nds another goal. It does not thereby give up what it is really about, its principle, but merely adopts a different way to pursue it. This is not to say, of course, that action cannot fail. The actor might misjudge which goal would further her principle and consequently end up contravening rather than advancing that principle, or she might shy away in the face of opposition, or betray the principle for other motives. For action, failure is thus failure of judgment, or of courage, or of loyalty. (Accordingly, Arendt considers judgment and courage to be cardinal political virtues.47 ) The above is also not to say that action does not really care about reaching its goal. It certainly does strive to attain what it has envisioned. After all, this is what it means to set oneself a goal. The point is simply that action is ready to revise its goal and that such revision does not necessarily imply failure since it may benot due to an error of judgment, in which case it would constitute a failure, butforced by a change of circumstances that the actor could neither have predicted nor prevented. I said above that actions goals follow from the principle it has adopted. It is important to emphasize that the verb to follow is here not to be understood in the sense of a logical deduction. Arendt makes clear that a principle does not strictly determine which goal should be pursued in a particular situation. (If it did, the selection of the goal would be a matter of reasoning, not of judgment.) Principles are much too general to prescribe particular goals, although every particular aim can be judged in the light of its principle once the act has been started.48 This generalitystriking in the examples I cited is a crucial feature of principles, for it is what allows them to perform their role of guiding action. Because they are general, they give guidance at all times, whatever the circumstances. In every situation there are more or less just, more or less charitable, more or less glorious actions available.49 As Arendt asserts in the quotation just given, every aim can be evaluated with reference to the chosen principle. It thus becomes clear how the principle can guide action despite the latters unpredictability. Whatever may happen, however our fellow citizens may react to our initiative, there will be a way to advance our principle. Generality is a crucial quality also in another respect. It underlies a further important function of principles, the function, namely, to unite a group of actors in a joint endeavor. Because of its generality, a principle can be shared 13

by a plurality of agents. Whoever you are, whatever your station, you can partake in the realization of justice, or of charity, or of honor. This is to say that only because it is guided by principles can action be in concert. To act with (or against) others means to be committed to the same (or conicting) principles. I will return to this point in the last section, when discussing the role of promising. Perhaps the most important aspect is still missing. The guiding principle saves action from arbitrariness, as Arendt puts it in On Revolution. Let me quote the relevant passage in full. What saves the act of beginning from its own arbitrariness is that it carries its own principle within itself, or, to be more precise, that beginning and principle, principium and principle, are not only related to each other, but are coeval. The absolute from which the beginning is to derive its own validity and which must save it, as it were, from its inherent arbitrariness is the principle which, together with it, makes its appearance in the world. The way the beginner starts whatever he intends to do lays down the law of action for those who have joined him in order to partake in the enterprise and to bring about its accomplishment. As such, the principle inspires the deeds that are to follow and remains apparent as long as the action lasts.50 We nd in this passage concentrated all of the aspects mentioned. First, the principle impels action: Its adoption is coeval with the original act, and it inspires the deeds that are to follow. Second, it guides action: It lays down the law of action for the subsequent endeavor. Third, it unites a group of actors: It brings together those who have joined [the initiator] in order to partake in the enterprise. Lastly, it saves action from arbitrariness: It is that from which action derive[s] its own validity. The last point is likely to meet with an objection. To be sure, the principle which is coeval with the act of beginning guides the ensuing deeds and thus saves these from arbitrariness. Yet what about the act of beginning itself, the adoption of the new principle? On what grounds do the actors make this commitment? How do they pick a principle from the innumerable options the various principles that Arendt refers to as well as the as yet unheard-of principles they may come to invent? In the above passage, Arendt does not say anything that would make the commitment non-arbitrary. In fact, it seems 14

to follow from what she says that the commitment is arbitrary. Does the claim that the principle saves the act of beginning from arbitrariness not mean that it saves itself, given that the two are coevalgiven, that is, that the principle, being a new principle, does not preexist the act of beginning but coincides with it, both temporally and logically? In other words, is Arendt not in effect saying that the act of beginning grounds itself ? And is such self-grounding not the same as arbitrariness, namely that the act is not based on anything but itself? I have to postpone these important questions. To address them will only be possible in the last section, after having discussed the relationship between Arendts notion of principles and her account of the faculty of promising in The Human Condition.

The semblance of morality

My exposition of Arendts conception of principled action is thus practically complete. I want to conclude it with a second note on the secondary literature. Some of Arendts readersthe second group mentioned at the beginning have tried to mitigate her claims in The Human Condition about the unpredictability and amorality of action by looking elsewhere for a moral foundation to her theory. Vis--vis this group, I want to argue that the action-guiding principles she envisages play the role of moral principles but are not be equated with such principles (as traditionally understood). Seyla Benhabib is the most prominent of this group of scholars. She seeks to exonerate Arendts theory from the charge of immoralism. The title of the paper with which she introduced her approach pronounces it at the outset: Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics in Arendts Thought (1988). Benhabib sees in Arendts account of the faculty of judgment thenot fully developedbasis for a moral dimension to her conception of action. Drawing on Kant, Arendt understood the faculty of judgment as the faculty of enlarged thought (as Kant put it), that is, as the faculty of taking other peoples viewpoints into account, of seeing an issue also from theirand not only from ones ownposition. It is easy to see why Benhabib perceives in this faculty a possible basis for morality. Enlarged thought by itself, however, is not enough, she argues:

15

[. . .] the crucial issue is whether the exercise of judgment is guided by moral principles, which themselves reect a universalistic morality, or whether such exercise takes no bearings from moral principles and is instead governed by a situational casuistic.51 The latter, Benhabib maintains, is the case for Arendt. On Arendts account, she claims, judgment operates without publicly shared guidelines, it is based on nothing but idiosyncratic intuitions.52 She does not exonerate Arendt completely, thus. She sees in Arendts conception of judgment a basis for morality which, however, leads back into arbitrariness because Arendt fails to provide it with guiding principles. Benhabib thus completely overlooks that Arendt does supply action and judgment with such principles. It is true, of course, that Arendts principles are not (all) moral principles in the sense that Benhabib has in mind. When Benhabib objects to Arendt that there is a moral foundation to politics insofar as any political system embodies principles of justice53 , her disagreement with Arendt is considerably smaller than she thinks. It lies in the words any or of justice, respectively. For Arendt, every political system embodies some principle(s), and some political systems embody principles of justice. Admittedly, though, the disagreement is still pretty big. It turns on whether there is one (set of) principle(s) that governsor ought to governall politics. Such is what Benhabib calls for. Arendt, by contrast, thinks that there is apotentially innitevariety of principles by which human beings may act, by which they may establish the terms of their coexistence. In order to make this point clearer, I want to discuss a commentator who belongs to the same group in my scheme as Benhabib but takes a signicantly different approach, namely Maurizio Passerin dEntrves. Like Benhabib, Passerin dEntrves seeks to refute the criticism that Arendts theory of action suffers from a moral decit. But unlike Benhabib, he does recognize that Arendts notion of principles is relevant to the issue. In fact, he sees in Arendts principles exactly what Benhabib nds missing. He understands them as moral principles, principles that are recognized to be binding for every member of the political community.54 As I have already indicated, I believe that this reading is mistaken. Before I state what is to be said against it, let me lay out what can be said for it. As we have seen, the notion of principles is to dispel the threat of arbitrariness, and it was the perception of this threat that provoked the charge of immorality. It is thus not surprising that the principles Arendt envisages indeed play the role 16

of moral preceptsin certain respects. They give action guidance, they inform the actors deeds. Also, they provide a criterion by which to evaluate action. A deed is laudable if it furthers the principle that inspired it and reproachable if it fails to do so. We nd these two aspects condensed in Arendts formulation that the principle that appears in a new beginning lays down the law of action for the subsequent endeavor. In short, principles are of a normative nature. (This is the remaining fth aspect.) Passerin dEntrves is thus right to adduce the notion of principles against the allegation of immoralism. By devising this notion, Arendt makes clear that her claim that action is unpredictable must not be taken to mean that action is unrestrained.55 However, to call the principles in question moral principlesan adjective Arendt herself does not use in this contextand to characterize them as being recognized to be binding for every member of the political community is at least misleading. The community by which a principle is recognized is the group of actors who together venture a new beginning. And in many cases, that group is a far minority. It does not coincide with the political community at large. In other words, what Passerin dEntrves fails to acknowledge is that the principles Arendt talks about are innovative in nature. What makes the actors endeavor a new beginning is that they adopt a new principle. And what makes them a minority is that not everyone follows suit. Insofar as we think of moral precepts as indeed valid always and for everyone, such precepts are the wrong model for understanding Arendts notion of principles.56 The two concepts share a few aspects, but they are not to be equated. This is most apparent in the fact that Arendt cites fear or hatredimpulsions hardly considered moralas possible action-guiding principles.57 The question to be asked, then, is this: If the two thingsmoral principles and principles in Arendts senseare not the same, how are they related to each other? How do principles as conceived by Arendt stand to moral principlesthe greatest happiness principle, say, or the categorical imperative? Is the relation one of subordination, or of inclusion, or of competition? Arendt explicitly rejects the idea that there is or can be a single moral principle (or even a countable set of principles) governing the realm of human affairs. She asserts that we cannot expect any moral propositions or commandments, no nal code of conduct from the thinking activity, least of all a new and now allegedly nal denition of what is good and what is evil.58 It is thus clear, I believe, that her notion of principles is supposed to replace the moral principles that philosophy has so long been concerned with. The key difference between the two is that Arendt believes that there is no nite set of principles, 17

that the capacity for action is precisely the capacity to invent ever new principles, while moral principles as traditionally understood are thought to be exclusive and exhaustive. Put differently, Arendt holds that thesupposedly exclusive, universal, incontrovertiblemoral principles proclaimed by philosophy are in fact political principles. Like other principles, they rely on being adopted and realized by a group of actorsthat is, they rely on people agreeing to fashion their coexistence on their basisand they thereby compete with a variety of other possible principles.

5 Principles and promises

Let me take stock. The focus of this paper has been Arendts idea that action is guided by principles. I have examined the different aspects of this idea and thereby highlighted the crucial role that it plays in Arendts conception. I have sought to elucidate her terse remarks on the subject, criticizing the ways in which they have hitherto been treated by her readers. What remains to be dealt with are the two issues deferred earlier, the puzzling absence of the notion of principles in The Human Condition and the persistence of the threat of arbitrariness. I will begin with the former. It will lead us to the latter. I noted at the end of the second section that the idea that action is guided by principles holds a relatively low prole in Arendts oeuvre. It recurs throughout her writings, yet each time she only spends a few pages on it. If, as I claim, it is a crucial element of her conception, the question arises why she does not devote to it more space. Even more surprising than the terseness of Arendts remarks, however, is the fact that in The Human Condition, her main work on the topic of action, we do not nd the idea at all. A secondand more troublingquestion is thus why this supposedly essential motif is not mentioned, let alone developed, in the work in which we would most expect it. To the rst question, not much of an answer can be given, I believe. It is true that we would have liked Arendt to elaborate further on the notion of principles. That she did not do so need not mean, though, that she considered the notion to be of secondary importance. In fact, it cannot mean that, if my argument as to its crucial role is correct. Moreover, the fact that the notion reappears again and again in her oeuvre suggests that she indeed deemed it to be essential. The reason for her terseness may simply be that she considered what she said to be evident enough. 18

Let me move on to the second question, then, the more pressing one: Why does Arendt not bring up the notion of principles in The Human Condition? Before I can address the question, I need to clarify it. Arendt does in various contexts refer to particular principles of the kind we are interested inthe principle of charity which dened the early Christian community, for example, or the principle of equality which took hold in the wake of the American and French Revolutions59 yet she does not, as in the other writings, explicate the role that such principles play in and for the process of action.60 That role the role of binding and directing a group of actors in their joint endeavor is in The Human Condition performed by something else, namely by mutual promises, or contracts.61 On this account, what keeps the actors together is the word they have given each other, and not, or not primarily, a principle they all adhere to. In other words, what binds them is that they have committed themselves to one another, rather than that they happen to be committed to the same principle. With this in mind, let me ask again: Why does Arendt not discuss the notion of principles in The Human Condition? As the rest of her oeuvre shows, it is not the case that she had not yet discovered the idea, or that she had already dropped it. So what is the reason for the lacuna? I have to admit that I do not have a full answer to this question. I can, however, provide two considerations that mitigate the puzzle, even if they do not entirely resolve it. The rst consideration concerns the place of The Human Condition within Arendts oeuvre. Margaret Canovan has convincingly argued that Arendt did not consider this book to be the comprehensive treatise of politics as which it was received. It arose out of Arendts preoccupation with the theoretical and practical predicaments revealed by (her study of) the phenomenon of totalitarianism, and it was thought to be a prolegomenon of sorts to her projected Introduction into Politics. In [Arendts] view, [The Human Condition] was a less complete, more contingent work than readers often suspect, concerned not so much with politics as with the predicament from which politics must start. It is therefore not quite the political treatise it is often taken for. [...] Arendt herself did not regard The Human Condition as the denitive statement of her political theory, but rather as a kind of preliminary to political theory proper, an investigation of the human activities that have most bearing upon politics and have been most misunderstood.62 19

If we thus decenter the place of The Human Condition in our reading of Hannah Arendtthe citation is from Benhabib, who concurs with Canovan on this point63 the fact that the notion of principles is not featured in this book will be less worrying, given that in the fragments of the Introduction into Politicsto which, according to Canovan, The Human Condition was to lead upit reappears in its usual role.64 Admittedly, though, we cannot leave it at that. The problem, I noted, is not only that Arendt does not discuss the role of principles in The Human Condition, but that she seems to attribute this role to something else, namely mutual promises, such that we seem to be confronted with a change of mind rather than with a simple lacuna. The question thus arises how these two things, principles and promises, are related to each other. I want to propose the following answer: Promising and principles, rather than being in tension or in competition, are in fact complementary. The principle constitutes the content of the promise. Vis--vis each other, the actors commit themselves to a principle. What Arendt says in The Human Condition about mutual promises hence does not contradict what she elsewhere says about principles, and so we are dealing with a simple lacuna after all. This connection between principles and promises provides the solution to, and so is illustrated by, the issue that I left open at the end of the third section, the issue of arbitrariness. We saw that the principle that appears in an act of beginning is supposed to save the latter from its inherent arbitrariness, yet it turned out that it is not clear how it does that. The principle guides the ensuing actions and thus makes those non-arbitrary. But how can it save itself, its coming to be adopted in an act of beginning, from arbitrariness? The answer can only be: it cantif, that is, we focus on the act by which a particular agent commits herself to a principle. This act is indeed arbitrary in the sense that it is not grounded in anything else. The commitment to the principle would not be a new beginningor, put differently, the principle would not be a new principleif it were based on some sort of ultimate ground. (That there is no such ultimate grounda divine command, a natural moral order, a law of history, or the likeis a mainstay of Arendts thought.) However, the commitment may be saved from arbitrariness after the fact. The principle is not arbitrary to the extent that the agent does not remain alone in adopting it, that is, to the extent that she is joined by her fellow citizens. Andthis is the central pointshe needs to be joined by her fellows if the principle is to be realized at all, if she is to succeed in putting it into effect, in fashioning her community in its light. No man can act alone, Arendt emphasizes. Men if they wish to 20

achieve something in the world must act in concert.65 So, the agent needs the cooperation of other agents. And in order to gain their commitment she needs to assure them of her commitment, through promises and mutual contracts. We are thus able to perceive how the principle, in conjunction with the human faculty of giving promises, saves the act of beginning from arbitrariness. It makes this act extendable, it opens it to others, it invites them to join in, to adopt it, to carry on the project thus begun. Only with the help of others can a principle be realized, and if it indeed nds such support, its original adoptionthe act of beginningwill have been non-arbitrary.

Conclusion
In the opening paragraphs, I remarked that Arendts claims about the unpredictability and amorality of action have been received in three different ways. Some have criticized Arendt for these claims, arguing that no viable conception of action is possible on this basis. Others have sought to excuse her, pointing to a hidden moral foundation to her theory. I have discussed these readings in the second and fourth sections, respectively. They err, I argued, in that they either neglect (Villa, Benhabib) or misinterpret (Kateb, Passerin dEntrves) Arendts idea that action is guided by principles. There is, I said, a third group of commentatorsMargaret Canovan and Bonnie Honig are the most prominent exponentswho have recognized in Arendts claims about the incalculability and unruliness of action the corollary of her radical afrmation of human freedom, of our capacity to make a new beginning. They have consequently taken these claims as something to be afrmed rather than resisted. As will have become evident by now, I am sympathetic to this reading. The aim of this paper was to show that it can be defended vis--vis its two competitors only if we stress that action is guided by principles.66 It is with this idea that Arendt squares the circle of afrming radical freedom while avoiding the threat of arbitrariness, of denying a universal morality while allowing for political ideals. In short, only the notion of principles completes Arendts conception of a plural yet concerted, unpredictable yet guided, amoral yet normative action.

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Notes
Arendt 1958, 205-6, 233-5, 243-7. Arendt 1958, 205. 3 Arendt 1958, 7. 4 Arendt 1958, 96. 5 Arendt 1958, 136-9. 6 Arendt 1958, 232-3. 7 Arendt 1958, 96-7. 8 Arendt 1958, 121. We may add that, to the extent that there is not only a technological but also a political aspect to the organization of the labor process, the latter is subject to change not only due to the inventiveness of work but also due to the unruliness of action. 9 Arendt 1958, 177. 10 This is how Arendt puts it (1958, 256 & 321). We may in fact expand her list. Nature presents us with a nested hierarchy of organisms, from the gene to the cell to the animal to the family to the species to the ecosystem at large. Each of them can be considered the primary seatthe subject, as Arendt terms itof the life process. Arendt makes this point for the items in the middle of the list. She notes that in antiquity the process of production and consumption was located in the familial household (1958, 24) while in modernity, with the rise of the science of national economy, it came to be seen on the scale of society as a whole (1958, 28-9). We may add that we nd in late modernity also the opposite trend, namely to regard the individual as the fundamental unit of economic activity. And the selsh gene and the Gaia theses, nally, show that the seat of life can just as well be situated at the extremes of the above list. The conclusion to be drawn is that the life process does not have a primary seat, or subject. The process of generation, reproduction, and decay takes place on different levels without one of them being fundamental. The gene is a means for the reproduction of the animal just as much as the animal is a means for the reproduction of the gene, and the same can be said about the animal and the species, or about the species and the ecosystem. 11 Arendt 1958, 221, 256, 321. 12 Arendt introduces the notion of plurality differently, namely in terms of the uniqueness of human beings (1958, 175-6). The point is the same. That human beings are unique means that they do not fall into predened categoriesfor instance the predened parts of an organic whole. 13 In fact, the point can just as well be put the other way around: The terms of our coexistence are not settled because we have the capacity to determine them ourselves, the capacity to act. The two sideswhat Arendt means by plurality and what she means by action thus imply one another. They are two sides of the same coin, alternative descriptions of the same phenomenon, which is the human power of self-determination. 14 Arendt 1958, 143-4. 15 Arendt 1958, 141-3. 16 Arendt 1958, 119-20. 17 Arendt 1958, 140-4. 18 Arendt 1958, 190. 19 Arendt 2006, 150.
2 1

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Arendt 1981, II, 154 & 180. In The Human Condition, though, Arendt is not so categorical. Action almost never achieves its purpose, she says there (1958, 184, emphasis added). 21 Arendt 2006, 150. 22 Arendt 1958, 41-3. 23 In On Violence, for instance, Arendt remarks that no other human ability has suffered to such an extent from the progress of the modern age [as the ability to begin something new, the faculty of action] (1972, 179). 24 I thank Bonnie Honig for raising this point to me. 25 Kateb 1984, 32-3. 26 Arendt 1958, 205. 27 Kateb 1984, 32-9; 2000, 139-44. 28 Kateb 2000, 138; 1984, 10-2. 29 Villa 1996, 59. 30 Villa 1996, 281, note 118. 31 Arendt 1953, 313-5. Arendt later used this essay as the nal chapter for the second and subsequent editions of Origins of Totalitarianism (1966). There, the passage can be found on pp. 467-8. In earlier writings, Arendt appears to employ the term principle more loosely, in the sense of rule or maxim, for example when, in The Eggs Speak Up (1994, 283-4), she uses it for the proverb You cant make an omelette without breaking eggs. 32 Arendt 2006, 150-1. 33 Arendt 1965, 201 & 212-4. 34 Arendt 2005, 194-6. 35 Arendt 1981, II, 199-203. 36 Kateb testies to the obscurity in that, while proposing the interpretation I criticized above, he ultimately admits his perplexity: I do not know how to put her thought exactly (1984, 13); I cannot be sure that I have her meaning (2000, 138). Kateb is not alone in nding the idea puzzling. John McGowan notes that he must confess that beyond recognizing that [Arendt] is using principle to identify the orientation that guides actions, [he] nd[s] this facet of her theory of action obscure (1998, 183). 37 On Revolution is an exception in this respect. Montesquieu appears there in various contexts, but not in the passages where Arendt talks about action being guided by principles. 38 Arendt 2005, 195. 39 Arendt 1981, II, 201-2. 40 Arendt 1958, 53-4. 41 Arendt 1965, 214. 42 Some of the aspects that I am about to examine have been pointed out by Garrath Williams in his paper Love and Responsibility: A Political Ethic for Hannah Arendt (1998). Williams brings up the notion of principles in the same context as I do, namely concerning the moral dimension of Arendts conception of action. However, he does not seek to explain how principles fulll the role that Arendt assigns them. 43 Arendt 2005, 195. 44 Arendt 2006, 150.

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Kateb perceives a certain vagueness in Arendts thought concerning the question of the content of political action (1984, 16). I contend that the answer to this question is provided by the notion of principles and that there is hence no such vagueness. 46 Arendt 2006, 150. 47 Arendt 2006, 155, and 2005, 169. 48 Arendt 2006, 151. 49 The contrast between the generality of principles and the particularity of goals has been discussed along similar lines and more extensively by James Knauer (1980). 50 Arendt 1965, 212-3. 51 Benhabib 1988, 42. 52 Benhabib 1988, 45. 53 Benhabib 1988, 46. 54 Passerin dEntrves 1994, 86-92. 55 Lawrence Biskowski (1993) has argued that for Arendt the ethical foundation of action and judgment is care for the world, which apparently differs from what I propose. At the same time, he highlights Arendts claim that action springs from principles like justice, equality, or honor. It is not clear how, on his account, the two thingscare for the world and principles are related to each other. He suggests that the world provides the basis on which we determine our principles. Yet he also, in a footnote, calls care for the world one particular principle. See pp. 878-80. 56 There is a second way in which Passerin dEntrves characterization of Arendts principles as moral principles is deceptive. We normally think of moral precepts as having a merely negative function, in the sense that they set limits which are not to be transgressed but, beyond that, do not tell us what to do. (Admittedly, this holds for the categorical imperative more than for the greatest happiness principle, for the ten commandments of the Old Testament more than for Jesus of Nazareths teachings in the New.) Arendts principles, however, have a positive function. They do not only set limits. They are, as we have seen, what incites and directs action in the rst place. 57 Arendt 2006, 151. 58 Arendt 2003, 167. 59 Arendt 1958, 53-4 & 39. 60 Arendt does mention Montesquieus notion of principles in a footnote but does not develop it in any way (1958, 190-1, note 17). 61 Arendt 1958, 243-47. 62 Canovan 1992, 99-101. 63 Benhabib 2003, xxxix. 64 Arendt 2005, 194-6. 65 Arendt 1981, II, 180 & 201. 66 Both Canovan and Honig do mention the notion of principles in one of their writings on Arendt, but they do not give it the central role that I advocate for it. Canovan, in her all too short discussion of the notion in Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought (1992, 172-75), remarks that the fact that Arendt adopted and extended Montesquieus term [. . .] must have had to do with the depth of her moral skepticism, with her conviction, that is, that there is no single, universal morality to govern our actions. My paper can be seen as an explication of this remark which in Canovans book remains undeveloped. As for Honig,

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she discusses the notion of principles in Arendt, Identity, and Difference. She sees it as belonging to the Arendt of Between Past and Future only, claiming that in The Life of the Mind, no mention is made of [. . .] principles (1988, 81). Taken literally, this claim is incorrect, and I have tried to show that it cannot even be accepted as a hyperbole. The notion of principles plays a more important role in Arendts theory than Honig acknowledges.

References
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Honig, Bonnie. 1988. Arendt, identity, and difference. Political Theory 16 (1): 7798. Kateb, George. 1984. Hannah Arendt. Politics, conscience, evil. Oxford: Martin Robertson. . 2000. Political action. Its nature and advantages. In The Cambridge companion to Hannah Arendt, edited by Dana Villa, 130148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knauer, James T. 1980. Motive and goal in Hannah Arendts concept of political action. The American Political Science Review 74 (3): 721733. McGowan, John. 1998. Hannah Arendt. An introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Passerin dEntrves, Maurizio. 1994. The political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. London: Routledge. Villa, Dana. 1996. Arendt and Heidegger. The fate of the political. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, Garrath. 1998. Love and responsibility. A political ethic for Hannah Arendt. Political Studies 46 (5): 937950.

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