On Hannah Arendt: The Worldly In-Between of

Human Beings and its Ethical Consequences1

Eveline Cioflec
Department of Philosophy, University of Fort Hare
P.O. Box 7426
East London 5201
cioflec@web.de
Abstract

In this paper, I show how a concept of ethics can be derived from Hannah
Arendts theory of action in The Human Condition, which contains from
her call for action. When she looks at the political actor, as well as at the
concept of political situation, her ethical claim is first of all the need to
take initiative, to act. Hence, political situations as she defines them are
discussed as common responsibilities. But common responsibility is
rooted in the in-between of human beings, rather than in individual human nature and is determined by Arendts principle of humanity. Therefore, at the centre of an implicit Arendtian ethics stands the world and the
in-between of human beings.
Arendts concept of action as analyzed in her book The Human Condition derives
from her understanding of the in-between of human beings as co-operation and mutual
recognition. On the one hand, her concept of world refers to durable works2 (Arendt
1958: 136); on the other hand, it means the realm of free action and, more precisely, of
political action. The world is provided and preserved by all human activities for the
newcomers who are born into the world of strangers, which entails responsibility
and, as we shall see, ethics (Arendt 1958: 9).
The situations created by and through action between human beings, e.g., political
situations, are not simply events that occur in history and politics; neither can they be
traced back to single acting subjects. Political situations refer to individuals acting in
concert (Arendt 1958: 179), and there are two major consequences of this concept.
First, politics concern everyone as long as each has the right to become involved with
acting in concert with others.3 Secondly, the political realm exists only in human interactions.
In this paper, I focus on this second aspect, that of human interaction, and show the
elements by which this concept leads to an ethics that does not focus on individual re1

2
3

This paper is based on research done as a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow in 2009/2010 at Bard College
and the New School for Social Research, New York, USA. For final revisions and support, I wish to
thank Margaret Lenta, Patrick Lenta and Adriano Palma, all at the University of KwaZulu-Natal,
Durban, where I am currently based.
Durability is the main characteristic of the world made by work. Recently Peg Birmingham highlighted
this aspect of durability in Arendts work from a different perspective, namely from the perspective of
an enduring world (see Birmingham 2011).
I refer to Arendts claim concerning the right to have rights (1973: 296), discussed later in this paper.

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sponsibility for the other for example, as Emmanuel Levinas emphasizes, or responsiveness to the other, as in Bernhard Waldenfels approach. I shall show how, for
Arendt, with regard to politics, concerted activity involving several individuals (which
she calls plurality) and the worldly in-between are ontologically prior to any ethical
subject. This concept might offer new suggestions for a political ethics, focusing on
the preservation of world order and the scope proper for political actors.
Political Situations and Plural Action
Arendt explicitly discusses situations by which she means the conditions of human
existence, individually, collectively and historically. Describing socio-political and
historical contexts, on the one hand, this concept of situations might remind us of
constellations as the term is used by Walter Benjamin, when he shows that history
consists in chance groupings of human affairs (Benjamin 1980: 691-704, esp. 704).
More precisely, this concept of situations refers to mankind in the modern world, to
the present day human situation, which for Jaspers shows up in border situations(see
Jaspers:1932).4 She notes about the latter:
By existence he [Karl Jaspers] means, not ordinary everyday life in its continuity, but those few moments during which alone we experience our authentic
selves and recognize the uncertainty of the human situation as such. These are
border situations, in comparison to which all of everyday life is merely a falling away. (Arendt 1994: 31)5
Arendt also uses the term situation for particular political states of affairs; for example, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1964), many different particular political situations are mentioned. This use of the term suggests a concept, namely the political
situation, in which the word situation is used with no single meaning. It is defined in
each case not only by circumstances and constellations of human history, but also specifically by reference to individual actions and freedom in particular cases. These particular cases are usually described in terms of the freedom to act.
Therefore, in addition to the large concept of the situation of mankind, meaning
the conditioning of human beings by certain historical constellation, to which Arendt
refers in her Prologue to The Human Condition (1958: 3),6 she outlines less explicitly
a concept of political situation by emphasizing the importance of action in the public
realm.7 This second concept of situation is conclusive for Arendts concept of an ethics in politics. In contrast to the first historical and anthropological concept, the term
4
5
6
7

For Arendt such a situation may be created, for example by the sciences in the situation of the modern
age, which lasts until the beginning of the 20th Century (Arendt 1958: 6).
Arendt quotes from Jaspers (1925: 229ff.).
For Arendt such a situation is created for instance by the sciences: the situation created by the sciences
is of great political significance (Arendt 158: 3) and refers to the situation of the modern age, which
lasts until the beginning of the 20th Century, when the modern world begins (Arendt 158: 6).
There are two concepts of political situation in Arendts writings, two ways to use this term: a general
concept which refers to mankind and historical constellations and a particular concept which refers to
specific historic-political encounters. This latter concept can be considered as an inexplicit concept of
situation which names the specific dynamics, tension and thrown-ness of any action in public. On the
importance of situation in Arendts thinking (see also Kohn 1990). To put it with the words of
Young-Bruehl, She [Arendt] specialized in analyzing people within their contexts, their historical moments, looking for what was new, without precedent, in their experience (Young-Bruehl 2006: 8). Analyzing people means looking at the details of situations on a smaller scale, but still in the light of history, implied here by the historical moments.

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political situation emphasizes the freedom of individuals to act. Although conditioned by the historical situation, an individual can contribute to a political change towards freedom. In her preface to Men in Dark Times she states that
even in the darkest of our times we have the right to expect some illumination,
and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than
from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women,
in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and
shed over the time span that was given to them on earth []. (Arendt 1983: xi)
In The Human Condition, direct political involvement is the highest contribution to the
achievement of freedom, and it conditions the meaning of the light mentioned in the
quotation above. Arendt mentions four activities that define the human condition: labour, work, action, and thinking (1958: 8-10). Out of these, only labour, work and action are discussed in The Human Condition, whereas thinking is extensively discussed
in a later text (Arendt 1978: part I). It is not human nature Arendt is concerned with in
her analysis of the human condition. She does not strive to find any sort of human essence, nor does she search for an answer to the question of what makes people human. She is primarily interested in pinpointing the conditions that determine human
life. Since these cannot be identical everywhere, they cannot be confounded with essences which determine what a human being is.8 The primary question for this book,
as well as for most of the writings of Arendt, is, how do human beings live? and her
discussion of the human condition proceeds from this.
The human activities that Arendt refers to are defined by the space in which they
take place, be it the private or the public realm. Meanwhile, labour, which is defined
as necessarily life-sustaining, is rooted in the private realm; work and action are
world-building (Arendt 1958: 96)9 and, although both work and action take place in
the public realm, action alone is not bound to the material world.
Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to
the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world. (Arendt
1958: 7)
The space for action, therefore, is the public realm, and more specifically, in the realm
between human beings. Although all three activities analyzed by Arendt are intimately connected with the most general condition of human existence: birth and death,
natality and mortality (Arendt 1958: 8), action has the closest connection with the
condition of natality:
[T]he new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that
is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of
natality, is inherent in all human activities. (Arendt 1958: 9)
8

Arendt does not only distance herself from essentialism, but also from defining the human being by human conditions: the conditions of human existencelife itself, natality and mortality, worldliness, plurality, and the earth can never explain what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple
reason that they never condition us absolutely (Arendt 1958: 11).
Arendt refers to human life as being world-building, engaged in a constant process of reification
(1958: 96).

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The distinctive characteristic of action is therefore that it takes place in-between human beings with no necessary intervention in the material world. I shall discuss natality and plurality, conditions of actions shared with the other activities I have mentioned specifically: action takes place only between human beings, and therefore has
moral implications; it is conditioned by the context in which humanity exists, as I
shall show in the following pages. Furthermore, since action is political par excellence (Arendt 1958: 9), engagement in founding and preserving political bodies
(Arendt 1958: 8-9) is crucial to understanding how Arendt conceives of politics and
how this concept is determined by the moral dimension. As Margaret Canovan puts it
in her introduction to The Human Condition, unpredictability is characteristic of action
of which the outcome can never be determined (Canovan 1998). Unlike work, action
is not directed towards a certain goal.10 Moreover, fact that humans are plural, in the
sense of differing in the circumstances of their natality, makes it impossible to predict
what the outcome of an action will be.
It is the plurality of individuals that leads to emphasis on political situations rather
than on a political plan or a general view. For example, although Arendt criticizes the
national state, she also questions the possibility of a world government, as Seyla
Benhabib highlights (Benhabib 2004: 61).11 Nevertheless, the perspective in which political situations are discussed is that of humanity, yet not in the sense pointed out by
Canovan as being a misunderstanding, namely to delegate responsibility to some sort
of humanity as a totality. (Canovan 1958: xvii). Arendts concept of humanity is
based on plurality: Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the
same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who
ever lived, lives, or will live (1958: 8).
This concept of plurality is rooted in Arendts understanding of being human as being a person. She does not talk of man but of men (1958: 7) in this way plurality and
the possibility of personal differences are marked.
The quality of being a person, as distinguished from merely being human, is
not among the individual properties, gifts, talents, or shortcomings, with which
men are born, and which they may use or abuse. An individuals personal quality is precisely his moral quality, if we take the word neither in its etymological nor in its conventional sense but in the sense of moral philosophy. (Arendt
2003a: 79)
Furthermore, the moral quality for the distinctness of individuals, which is not the
same as otherness (Arendt 1958: 176), is rooted in thought and the capacity for
self-judgment, which implies the ability to live morally with oneself (Arendt 2003a:
97ff.).12 Based on this, the individual can deal with particulars, i.e., evaluate a certain
situation (Arendt 1982: 4). Since individuals are distinct, so that plurality is assured,
these moral qualities are the basis of plurality. By emphasizing plurality as a condition
10 Arendt here disagrees with Aristotle and those who have followed him in conceiving of a causa as necessarily having end in view (Aristotle, Metaphysics V, 1013 a).
11 It remains one of the most puzzling aspects of Hannah Arendts political thought that, although she
criticized the weaknesses of the nation-state system, she was equally skeptical about all ideals of a
world government (Benhabib 2004: 61).
12 Since morality concerns the individual in his singularity it relies on the capacity to live with [oneself].
And further, This living with [oneself] is articulated and actualized in the process of thought, and every
thought process is an activity in which I speak with myself about whatever happens to concern
me(Arendt 2003a: 97-98).

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of possibility for action, Arendt relies on several moral assumptions and there may
therefore be ethical implications of these assumptions, even if Arendt does not directly
refer to them.
To summarize the relation between political situations and actions, political situations are created through the activity of plural individuals among plural individuals,
namely through action that is possible because of natality, the possibility innate in
each individual for new beginnings. Political situations contain the possibility of
changes through action.
Political Situations and Events
Arendt defines a political situation as existing wherever action occurs; there exist, she
argues, possibilities that evoke common ethical responsibility and are rooted in the
particular circumstances. A political situation is defined by initiative, responsibility,
and participation in public life. We need therefore to look at the political actor in the
public realm in order to understand political situations. But first we need to distinguish
political situations from circumstances, occurrences in history, or events. For Arendt,
events as new beginnings do not occur as the result of divine intervention, but result
from human acts within history.13 For Arendt, as also for Alain Badiou, events denote world-changing occurrences.14 Events, even if they are world-changing, are only
preconditions for action and therefore for political situations. Even if they are occurrences in history that facilitate certain political situations, the characteristic of a political situation is that it can only be initiated by active participation of individuals.
Badious contention that thinking the singularity of situations as such [...] is the
obligatory starting point of all properly human action (Badiou 2002: 14). The difficulty of such an approach includes the question of defining a situation as well as how
it is to be understood. For Badiou, a political situation or a situation of action may exist on a very small scale. He discusses whether a doctor should treat a patient in a state
hospital, even if the patient does not have legal residency papers (Badiou 2002: 15).
He concludes that regardless of such legal details, the doctor should treat the patient
and understand this situation as a medical situation, which obliges him to follow his
Hippocratic Oath. This conclusion is based on the concept the human being, who
strives to be something more than just a biped without feathers, or who, in other
words, strives to be a subject of truth (Badiou 2002: 12).
The concept of moral obligation to fellow humans raised by Badiou regarding a political situation is relevant for Arendts understanding of a situation. The common
thread is that in order to formulate the idea of a situation, both Arendt and Badiou invoke human freedom: [b]y their ability to leave non-perishable traces behind, men,
their individual mortality notwithstanding, attain an immortality of their own and
prove themselves to be of a divine nature (Arendt 1958: 19).
Arendt understands immortality as a worldly condition of a divine nature, the persistence in the world of the reputation of an individual as excellent; an idea that she
derives from Greek philosophy. This immortality is gained through work and deeds
and, for Arendt as well as for Plato, this striving for immortality determines political
action (Arendt 1958: 20). In contrast to eternal, meaning timeless, immortality remains bound to the world. It means lasting, enduring within time.
13 The work of Arendt and Badiou has been influenced by Heideggers thought, but their concepts of
event have different meanings from Heideggers (Heidegger 1999: 20; for a different and more recent
translation contrast with Heidegger 2012).
14 Heidegger uses the term event only in singular since it refers to being (Heidegger 1999).

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Starting from here, we can see how a situation is different from an event: it is understood as an active response to an event and is related to immortality in the world, in
the sense that the performer of the action is striving to be lastingly remembered. An
event leads to action; it requires decision-making, the adoption of a position, and is
followed by action. Arendt sees an event as a striking conjuncture of facts, which requires a new decision, and a new position, different from the individuals habitual
stance.15 A situation cannot be defined merely as the sum of circumstances. If circumstances describe a conjuncture of facts, a situation differs because it implies possibility
of action. It follows that there must also be the freedom to act within a situation. The
possibility of action is related to human freedom to make decisions and to initiate
(Arendt 1958: 177).
Arendt refers to events with regard to the situations they bring up: hence the situation created by the sciences is of great political significance (1958: 3). Canovan is
correct when she states in her introduction to The Human Condition, that Arendts
book is a response to contemporary events. (Canovan 1998: ix) An event is constituted by facts, which may remain unnoticed until the change which they cause becomes evident. Arendt for example calls automation, or the replacement of human
labour by technology, such an event (1958: 4). For Arendt, events seem to be changing facts, either suddenly or in a process and they are recognized in terms of the
change in human lives that they bring about. By emphasizing action, Arendt demonstrates concern with how we act in response to events as occurrences. Political situations are created by the actions of individuals and differ from happenings or occurrences in which individuals may be passively involved in the flow of social or political
life.
Arendts understanding of political situations in this way underlines her contention
that they must be the creation of individuals who are responsible for their actions, and
that to assume responsibility for them. Therefore, on the one hand political situations
that is, political actions that determine changes may be brought about through the actions of an individual with the capacity to initiate. On the other hand, even if the responsibility for a situation may at times be collective, the responsibility for the actions
of the collective must to an extent be assumed by each individual.
Any political situation is determined by an event and has a moment of initiation, but
it only continues because of the actions of those involved, either in sympathy or in opposition. The role of an individual under such circumstances is to participate, in one
way or another in the political situation. Arendt emphasizes that a certain situation
cannot be completely repeated, as it is bound to already existing structures, but that an
event can relocate power. Each individual has the power to create a new beginning
within himself, and this is a result of the natality.
The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal,
natural ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. (Arendt 1958: 247)
Nevertheless, a political situation is created when individuals act in public, which
means to act together with other individuals. If every individual holds the power for a
new beginning, which is given by natality a political situation is constituted between
those who initiate. The way individuals create a political situation is by acting in con15 The moon-landing in 1957 is a further example of an event (Arendt 1958: 1).

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cert with others, which brings the powers of each individuals natality together with
those of his or her fellows (Arendt 1958: 179).
After the shift from individual action to acting in concert,16 we shall reconsider
Arendts concept of the in-between of human beings. It is this in-between that enables
acting in concert and it refers to the immaterial world we share, which nevertheless
relies on the material world of work.
The worldly in-between of human beings
In Arendts conceptual framework, togetherness leads back to a worldly in-between.
The material and objective world that we share is made by human beings (Arendt
1958: 136ff.).17 We can find this concept in Heideggers writings as well, in The Origin of the Work of Art, where, for example, a temple is bound to the earth being material, but because it has an abstract meaning it is related to the world of human
beings:
The temple-work, standing there, opens up a world and at the same time sets
this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground.
(Heidegger 1977b: 169)
For both Heidegger and Arendt, the world we share leads back to a world produced by
work.18 However, for Arendt the public realm, is not only defined by works, but also
by the common intersubjective world.19
For Arendt, there is a reciprocal rapport between the world and the activity of human beings. The world is produced by man: The world into which we are born,
would not exist without human activity, which produced it and All human activities
are conditioned by the fact that men live together [...] (1958: 22). The world is produced by work, as in the case of fabricated things, but it is also taken care of by human activity as in the case of cultivated land, and it is organized by this activity as
in the case of the body politic (1958: 22).
The theory of action Arendt conceives of in The Human Condition can be read as a
reply to Heidegger, who conceives of the world as work. She stresses that the world
consists of action, and criticizes Heidegger for barely developing a theory of action,
16 Forgiveness and promise (by which Arendt means the undertaking to start anew) are important steps towards this shift. But they are rooted in the personal and private life, since forgiveness is always offered
to a person, not to the alleged wrongs committed by a person, and is shaped by love, whereas promise is
also a personal commitment to another. Acting in concert would not be possible without these two releasing attitudes, but they are not seen by Arendt as solely constitutive of an ethics: her focus is rather
on the shared world, which must allow us the space of appearance.
17 In other words, against the subjectivity of men stands the objectivity of the man-made world rather than
the sublime indifference of an untouched nature. [...] Without a world between men and nature, there is
eternal movement, but no objectivity (Arendt 1958: 137).
18 The world as meaningful horizon has been discussed by Heidegger in Being and Time (1962) as well as
in Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (2001).
19 The public realm, as the common world, gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each
other. What makes mass society so difficult to bear is not primarily the number of people involved, but
the fact that the world between them has lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate
them. This situation resembles a spiritualistic sance where a number of people gathered around a table
might suddenly, through some magic trick, see the table vanish from their midst, so that two persons sitting opposite each other were no longer separated but also would be entirely unrelated to each other by
anything tangible (Arendt 1958: 53). With this analogy, Arendt points out the concreteness of the
world that ties people together. This concreteness is not necessarily the material world, but rather the
meaningful world (see Arendt 1958: 6ff., 78).

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although he refers to it. In the first pages of the Letter on Humanism, Heidegger notes
that action is accomplishment, producere (Heidegger 1977a: 193).20 Arendt reads
this text and, although in her published texts she never directly refers to Heidegger in
this regard, she notes as a marginalia: Not at all, this is the essence of producing. Acting can never fulfil, it does not have products.21 There is reason to think that she
wrote this note around 1950, since the book was published in 1947 and she visited
Germany in 1949, when she must have gained possession of this book, if not earlier
(Young-Bruehl 1982: 244ff.). Certainly, it could simply be a note she made while
reading the text; at the end of the text she may have changed her mind. But in her library, there is a second, 1967 edition of this text. There she notes, commenting on the
same paragraph, the following: This is the essence of producing. Acting is something
completely different.22
Arendts purpose in making these annotations is to show that Heidegger misunderstood action as a form of producing (Herstellen). Subsequently she will write a more
detailed theory of action, although her reading of Heidegger on this point seems a misinterpretation of Heideggers position.
Actions are, as we have seen, not only part of the world but also constitutive of the
world. The link between action, the public realm, and the private realm is the human
being. The world is nothing different from human affairs, but it is comprised of human
affairs and their products. For Arendt, although the durability of the world consists in
works, the vivid and changing world consists in the in-between of human beings
concretized as action. From this background of the human in-between, we can now focus on who the political actor is.
Human beings as political actors
For Arendt, who one is is a political question. By pointing out the difference between
who somebody is and what somebody is, she indicates that the who means the
self. Who somebody is, does not only sum up the qualities he or she has. Beyond
these qualities, there is a personal characteristic that cannot be reduced to them. This
characteristic can only be recognized by others:
In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique
personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world, while
their physical identities appear without any activity of their own in the unique
shape of the body and the shape of the voice. This disclosure of the who in
20 In his Letter on Humanism, Heidegger writes several decisive lines about action, namely: We are still
far from pondering the essence of action decisively enough. We view action only as causing an effect.
The actuality of the effect is valued according to its utility. But the essence of action is accomplishment.
To accomplish means to unfold something into the fullness of its essence, to lead it forth into its fullness
producere. Therefore only what already is can really be accomplished. But what is above all is Being. Thinking accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man (Heidegger 1977a: 193). Translation of: Wir bedenken das Wesen des Handelns noch lange nicht entschieden genug. Man kennt das
Handeln nur als das Bewirken einer Wirkung. Deren Wirklichkeit wird geschtzt nach ihrem Nutzen.
Aber das Wesen des Handelns ist das Vollbringen. Vollbringen heit: etwas in die Flle seines Wesens
zu entfalten, in diese hervorgeleiten, producere. Vollbringbar ist deshalb eigentlich nur das, was schon
ist. Was jedoch vor allem ist, ist das Sein. Das Denken vollbringt den Bezug des Seins zum
Menschen. (Heidegger 1947, 53; Heidegger 1967, 145)
21 Arendts note in German, reads as follows: Eben nicht, das ist das Wesen des Herstellens. Handeln
kann nie vollbringen es hat keine Produkte. (Heidegger 1947: p. 53, copy in the Hannnah Arendt Collection) (translated EC)
22 Arendts annotation in German is: Das ist das Wesen des Herstellens, Handeln ist etwas ganz
anderes(Heidegger 1967: 145, copy in the Hannah Arendt Collection). (translated EC)

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contradiction to what somebody is his qualities, gifts, talents, and shortcomings, which he may display or hide is implicit in everything somebody says or
does (...). (Arendt 1958: 179)23
The in-between of human beings is prior to the self. The political actor can be identified as a self; as a person starting from this in-between. This in-between as space of
appearance is present when individuals come together: appearing, showing oneself, is
always to the other:
The space of appearance comes into being wherever men are together in the
manner of speech and action, and therefore predates and precedes all formal
constitution of the public realm and the various forms of government, that is,
the various forms in which the public realm can be organized. (Arendt 1958:
199)
The very core of any political situation is thus built around the appearing of the self to
the other. Similar to Heidegger, who defines the human being (Dasein) as disclosure,
Arendt defines the self as originating from an openness. For Heidegger, in Being and
Time, this disclosure, that also assures openness, is temporal and constituted by the
ontological difference between Beings and Being. The human being is disclosure
since it opens up a horizon of world by questioning the Being. Within this horizon, the
self is given by the call of conscience to authenticity, to being oneself (Heidegger
1962: 319ff.). Arendt considers openness as provided by the plurality of human beings
and their relating to each other in the public realm through political action. Action can
be initiated by an individual but it needs the public realm; it needs plurality in order to
be action at all. It is irrelevant whether others agree or not with the initiated action because this cannot be action if it does not reach others the public realm.
The who of the political actor is rooted in plurality: in action and speech generally, we are dependent upon others, to whom we appear in a distinctness which we
ourselves, we would never be able to perceive (Arendt 1958: 243). An individual intrinsically relates to the other in order to understand who he or she is. The other is
present in our self-understanding, which means that there is no self-relation that does
not refer also to the other. This is how Arendt grounds the necessity of plurality for
action.
To put it differently, the who of the action, and since action is always political, the
political actor, is anonymous to him or her self. This aspect becomes important for understanding how action is possible. It is not only a question of subjective will, but a
question of power, which is personal and unique, but does not belong to that certain
person, as we will see below.24 The actor of the action does not dispose of the power,
except when acting in the plural public realm. Different from anonymity in mass society, where nobody acts and nobody can be held responsible (Arendt 1973: 305), the
23 This aspect of the constitution of the self through the others raises the question of identity, as Du Bois
points out: It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at ones
self through the eyes of others, of measuring ones soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused
contempt and pity. One ever feels his strivings; two warring ideals on one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (Du Bois 2007: 3). The question about the consequences of Arendts conception of the self certainly needs to be raised, and one of the possible approaches would be, for example, to follow Du Bois in underlining that the world is not necessarily shaping us in a coherent and/or acceptable way. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that the self is
constituted through the world and, implicitly, through the other.
24 Kristeva criticizes Arendt for not having included the personal body in her analyzes of who one is
(Kristeva 2001, 171ff.). Considering the problematic of the body, ethics has to include the question of
nature and environment that cannot be directly inferred from Arendts work.

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anonymity of the actor in the public realm can be stripped by others, as a result of the
story later told about his or her actions. The political actor forms an identity when he
or she appears in public and is seen by others and depicted by them during the conveying of his or her story.25
Arendt emphasizes the process-character of action that is, action takes place as
long as it is pursued and is being pursued not its pursuing an aim. By pursuing an action, the actor is free to become him or her self. Equality or the right to have rights
defines this political realm, the realm of political action where the free individual can
act, appear to others and become him or her self (Arendt 1973: 296).26
There are two levels of the public realm, the social and the political, but plurality is
evident only in the political realm. Society for Arendt is that curious, somewhat hybrid realm between the political and the private in which, since the beginning of the
modern age, most men have spent the greater part of their lives (Arendt 2003c: 205).
Meanwhile, the private realm is metaphorically defined as being within the protective
four walls. The social sphere is what we enter as soon as we leave the four walls
(ibid.). This sphere is determined by groups and associations in which we can follow
our vocations or have the pleasure of company. This sphere is governed by desires, a
place in which we can earn a living. Discrimination is constitutive of this sphere. The
principle of difference, as John Rawls would put it, applies for Arendt to the social
sphere, not to the realm of politics.27
Nevertheless, equality, which characterizes only the realm of politics, makes explicit
the differences between individuals in society: the more equal people have become in
every respect, and the more equality permeates the whole texture of society, the more
will differences be resented, the more conspicuous will those become who are visibly
and by nature unlike the others(Arendt 2003c: 200). Arendt discusses the differences
in society mostly with regard to their relevance for the body politic and the possibility
of a political realm. She discusses the right to have rights, but only insofar as these
rights concern the political sphere and not the private or social sphere.28 Equality or
the right to have rights defines, for Arendt, the political sphere, or the sphere of political action. As Badiou puts it, for Arendt the political refers to the plurality of human beings, to the being-together of human beings (Badiou 2002: 65).29
25 Political activity conceived as individual activity follows the Greek model modernity loses this individual initiative individuals act mainly as a member of a social group. Mrs. Arendts subject is the
present situation of man as a social creature, and with an enviable erudition she ranges over the social
sciences, history, and philosophy to buttress her view. For example: Political activity began with the
Greeks and means the individual as individual reacting with his equal fellows. In modern times such activity is almost extinct; instead we have the mass man who acts only as a member of a social group
(Oost 1958).
26 The right to have rights, refers to the possibility of universal rights, and highlights the right of every
human being to belong to a community (see also Benhabib 2004: 49ff.).
27 In A Theory of Justice, Rawls proposes the difference principle in order to take into account the particular situation of individuals. The problem which might still occur is that often inequality (of rights) is
taken as difference (of social and political situation) (see Rawls 1971).
28 The distinction between the private, social and political realm of human life in Arendts Reflections on
Little Rock, as well as the importance of the private sphere for human dignity and, consequently for political action, is extensively discussed by Berkowitz (2010: 243ff.).
29 For Badiou, the definition of politics as the stage of being-together provided by partisans of democracy of human rights, results in a failure to grasp the political essence of Nazism. He claims that the
collective (ensemble) has to be first determined, since: Nobody desired the being-together of the Ger-

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Consequently, the most powerful kind of action is acting in concert, when individuals come together and act together. As seen above, acting in concert would then mean
acting together as plural yet unique individuals.30 Plurality is a condition of political
action. Moreover, the loss of plurality, the loss of an in-between, possible only in plurality, leads to a desert. For the individual, there can still be an oasis in the social or
private realm, which nourishes life:
The oases are those fields of life which exist independently, or largely so, from
political conditions. What went wrong is politics, our plural existence, and not
what we can do and create insofar as we exist in the singular: in the isolation of
the artist, in the solitude of the philosopher, in the inherently wordless relationship between human beings as it exists in love and sometimes in friendship
when the heart reaches out directly to the other, as in friendship, or when the
in-between, the world, goes up in flames, as in love. Without the intactness of
these oases we would not know how to breathe, and political scientists should
know this. If they who must spend their lives in the desert, trying to do this or
that, constantly worrying about its conditions, do not know how to use the
oases, they will become desert inhabitants even without the help of psychology.
In other words, the oases, which are not places of relaxation but life-giving
sources that let us live in the desert without becoming reconciled to it, will dry
up. (Arendt 2005: 202)
Thus, from which perspective does the world between human beings look like a
desert? For Arendt, the desert is the loss of a worldly, political in-between. This
worldly in-between is a space of appearance(s). Since individual freedom, necessary
for action, is guaranteed by the possibility of the appearance of the individual in the
public space, the space of appearance is central for the Arendtian concept of action. In
the meantime, freedom is guaranteed by power. We shall see in the following section
how both power and freedom characterise the space of appearance, which is crucial
for the ethical consequences of the Arendtian conception.
Power and Freedom
For Arendt, freedom is freedom to appear to others, and freedom to become oneself by
acting, which is like a second birth:
With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance. This insertion is not forced upon
us by necessity, like labour, and it is not prompted by utility, like work. It may
be stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join,
but it is never conditioned by them; its impulse springs from the beginning
which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative. (Arendt 1958: 176-177)
mans more than Hitler (Badiou 2002: 65). The link between politics and Evil emerges precisely from
the way both the collective (ensemble) (the thematic of communities) and the being-with (the thematic
of consensus of the shared norms) are taken into consideration (Badiou 2002: 65). Badiou is right in
this regard, but the being-together in Nazism was subordinated to a higher Ideal, to an Ideology, which
held it together. The being-together was not by individual decision and action, but by ideology and
mass-phenomena, as Arendt describes it (1973: 356ff.).
30 For Arendt, individuals are unique by being born (Arendt 1958: 178); the difference between otherness,
uniqueness, and distinctness is discussed in The Human Condition (Arendt 1958: 176).

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657

As the insertion into the human world is between the human beings, actions by word
and deed are not rooted within the human being, but rather in-between them
(Sonntheimer 2005: iii). Freedom and spontaneity are necessary conditions for a space
between human beings, where politics can take place.
The differentiation that Arendt makes between human activities in The Human Condition is in the service of a critique of modernity, and emphasises the specific human
activity by which freedom is possible, namely action. Describing the historical process
of changes in the value of human activities, Arendt analyses society by looking at the
human activities which have been prioritised throughout history. If, in the ancient
Greek world, action and the political life were the highest activities (Arendt 1958:
313ff.), modernity brought with it the model of the homo faber to whom work was the
highest activity (Arendt 1958: 294ff.). However, work was replaced by labour as the
most valuable activity and therefore there was a loss of a common world (Arendt
1958: 192ff.): worldlessness is to be understood as a consequence of the activity
prevalent in the structure of society.
Arendt is concerned with the preservation of the world as a common world. This
stems from her view that, on the one hand, the condition of the possibility of human
freedom is a common world and, as such, a space of appearance. Yet, on the other
hand, freedom refers the possibility to create a world by acting: the ability to give new
meanings, to discover new constellations and, therefore, the freedom to bring a world
into being. Similarly, Arendt states, we do not know where action leads. Michel Foucaults definition of liberty is similar to that of Arendt: I do not think that there is anything that is functionally by its very nature absolutely liberating. Liberty is a practice (Ivison 1997: 51).31 Nevertheless, his concept of liberty is defined by resistance,
and not by creativity, such that powers are conceived differently. For Arendt, action is
a practice in the sense of ongoing deeds, without any specific aim, leaving the end
opened.32 Action is a way of living freedom and, moreover, freedom is guaranteed by
acting. By acting, the world as an in-between of human beings is kept alive and liberated from enhancing powers. Foucault criticizes institutions as powers that oppress individual freedom, whereas Arendt considers institutions as frames for establishing a
public realm in which action is possible. Institutions are not boundaries for freedom,
but rather boundaries for acting in concert, boundaries that facilitate acting in concert. To her, power is the condition of possibility of freedom, guaranteeing a space of
appearance, namely: Power is what keeps the public realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence (Arendt 1958: 200).
The power to act does not belong to an individual, but to the togetherness of individuals: While strength is the natural quality of an individual seen in isolation, power
springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they dis31 So there may, in fact, always be a certain number of projects whose aim is to modify some constraints,
to loosen, or even break them, but none of these projects can, simply by its nature, assure that people
will have liberty automatically, that it will be established by the project itself. The liberty of men is
never assured by the institutions and laws that are intended to guarantee them. This is why almost all of
these laws and institutions are quite capable of being turned around. Not because they are ambiguous,
but simply because liberty is what must be exercised (Foucault 1977: 94-97; see also Ivison 1997:
33).
32 The reason why we are never able to foretell with certainty the outcome and end of any action is simply
that action has no end. The process of a single deed can quite literally endure throughout time until
mankind itself has come to an end. (Arendt 1958: 233)

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perse (Arendt 1958: 200).33 This concept of power relies on the concept of dynamis
or Macht, understood as potentiality: Power is always, as we would say, a power potential and not an unchangeable, measurable, and reliable entity like force or strengths
(Arendt 1958: 200).34 Power, she thinks, is only present as long as it is manifest. It refers to tension, which keeps a situation alive, and allows facts or things to show up. In
the public realm, where nothing counts that cannot make itself seen and heard, visibility and audibility are of prime importance. To argue that they are merely exterior appearances is to beg the question (Arendt 2003c: 199).
Since the space of appearance is necessary for action to be possible at all, it could be
said that Arendt introduces a phenomenology of action: action is only present as appearance in the public realm or, more precisely, in a political situation in the public
realm. The public realm, though, remains an abstract idea, which should be understood
as originating from the political situation, as a fragment of the public realm. Therefore,
the concept of togetherness is constitutive of Arendts political theory.
Ethical consequences of emphasizing the in-between of human beings
Arendts implicit ethics relies on her emphasis on the space of appearance, as defined
by the above conception of freedom and the worldly in-between of human beings. In
her later writings, this space of appearance is protected by creating institutions and
laws, and lasting boundaries that institute a frame for action.35 Yet, the ethical dimension is not obvious at first glance: the value of action in itself, as an expression of freedom, and as creating a world in which plurality is possible. Her concepts of responsibility and humanity, presupposed by her claim for action, frame an ethics that relies on
promise, as expressed in treatises and contracts (Arendt 1958, 144), and forgiveness,
as release from the consequences of what we have done (Arendt 1958: 237).
The concept of humanity is best explained by re-reading the claim for the right to
have rights. As discussed above, this formula refers to equality in the political realm,
and in so doing leads back to a concept of humanity. As Benhabib puts it:
The right to have rights, in her [Arendts] view, transcends the contingencies of
birth which differentiate and divide us from one another. The right to have
rights can be realized only in a political community in which we are judged not
through the characteristics which define us at birth, but through our actions and
opinions, by what we do and say and think. (Benhabib 2004: 59)
The claim for the right to have rights entails universal moral claims concerning the
obligations that we owe to each other, since the first named right cannot be assured
by laws (Benhabib 2004: 66). Peg Birmingham explains:
For Arendt, significant speech and action, as well as the capacity to begin
something new, can occur only in a political space. Thus, the right to have
rights, which is established through the principle of initium restated as the principles of publicness and plurality, is the right to belong to a political space.
(Birmingham 2006: 59)
33 Further: Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the
property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps
together. When we say of somebody that he is in power we actually refer to his being empowered by a
certain number of people to act in their name (Arendt: 1970: 44).
34 Arendt insists on the conceptual distinction between power, force, strengths, authority, and violence
(1970: 43ff.)
35 For example, Arendt emphasizes the importance of adopting constitutions for the foundation of a state
as a foundation of freedom, confirming preceding revolutions (Arendt2006: 132ff.).

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659

Benhabib argues similarly, emphasizing the juridico-civil rights: in Arendtian language, the right of humanity entitles us to become members of civil society and to
juridico-civil rights (Benhabib 2004: 59). However, the right to have rights entails
more than these things:
Man of the twentieth century has become just as emancipated from nature as
eighteenth-century man was from history. History and nature have become
equally alien to us, namely, in the sense that the essence of man can no longer
be comprehended in terms of either category. On the other hand, humanity,
which for the eighteenth century, in Kantian terminology, was no more than a
regulative idea, has today become an inescapable fact. This new situation, in
which humanity has in effect assumed the role formerly ascribed to nature or
history, would mean in this context that the right to have rights, or the right of
every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity
itself. (Arendt 1973: 298)
The question to be raised here is what humanity means in this context.36 Clearly, it becomes a political term, since it is a claim that refers to the possibility of rights within a
community or state. I agree with Birmingham, inasmuch as, for Arendt, the concept of
humanity does not rely on ethical assumptions:
By providing a new principle of humanity, Arendt is able to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate shapes of power and political action without
having to invoke the ethical. Power, which is synonymous with acting politically with others, must be inspired by the categorical imperative of the political:
the principle of plurality provides us with a new law of humanity, demanding
that each actor, by virtue of the event of natality itself, has the right to appear
with others, the right to act and speak within the political space. (Birmingham
2006: 60)
Arendts concept of humanity is, it is true, linked to the political body and refers to the
space of appearance, the right to appear and the right to act. However, being universal
in this sense, and entailing responsibility for the common world, it has ethical
implications.
The responsibility to think what we are doing, pointed out in The Human Condition (see also Canovan 1998: xii) leads us to a later text, written in 1968, Collective
Responsibility. Collective responsibility is always political and refers to a community
(Arendt 2003b: 149). No moral, individual and personal, standards of conduct will
ever be able to excuse us from collective responsibility (Arendt 2003b: 157). A few
lines later we read: In the center of moral considerations of human conducts stands
the self; in the centre of political considerations of conduct stands the world (Arendt
2003b: 153).
Two aspects need to be emphasized: the prevalence of the world, and the responsibility of individuals to judge and to act. First, since the world is constituted by free individuals, this ultimate value finds expression in the freedom of the individual to act.
After all, preserving the world means caring for the newcomers for those who are
36 In Men in Dark Times, Arendt emphasizes that humanitas cannot be objectified. Therefore, the question what humanity is, cannot be asked without missing Arendts point. Humanitas means something
that was the very height of humanness because it was valid without being objective (Arendt1983: 73;
see also Berkowitz 2010: 241).

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born into a world of strangers (Arendt 1958: 9). Secondly, political considerations
of conduct (Arendt 2003b: 153), as we have seen above, refer to freedom for action
and speech. This freedom for action and speech does not rely on any transcendental
norm (Kant 1992: 125; see also Jokubaitis 2004: 48), but on situational judgment.
Arendts conception of moral judgment is derived from aesthetic judgment, and
some scholarship describes Arendts political theory as an aesthetisation of politics
(Villa 1996: 80ff.; see also Jokubaitis: 2004). It is not the moral dictum, but rather the
judgment grounded in the common sense as community sense (Arendt 1982: 72) that
is the basis for any ethical aspect of politics. Arendt relies on Kant and his critique of
the power of judgment to explore how a judgment in a certain situation can be made
(Kant 2007; see also Arendt 1982: 70ff.). Since traditional values became questionable, ethics is traced back to a morality of thinking in solitude, which is different from
the loneliness defined by the absence of others.37 As such, morality is bound to the
judgment of the individual,38 which has Socratic thinking as a model (Kohn 2005:
xxv).
Ethics is linked to situational judgment by individuals assuming responsibilities and
acting. Precisely because action is linked to certain situations, and because its outcome
is unpredictable, there is no ruling normativity. What arises from situational judgment
is action, which can be world-changing: not for the durable works, but for that part of
the world called the public realm, the in-between of human beings and the realm of
freedom and creativity. Action and freedom are to be considered values in themselves
and, therefore, they constitute an ethics rooted beyond individual subjectivity, namely
in the in-between of human beings, as seen above, reflected in the self. This is why:
[t]he criterion of right and wrong, the answer to the question, what ought I to
do? depends in the last analysis neither on habits and customs, which I share
with those around me, nor on a command of either divine or human origin, but
on what I decide with regard to myself (Arendt 2003a: 97).
Despite her reference to freedom from politics, Arendt pleads for common responsibility. She discusses freedom from politics with reference to the case of collective and
vicarious responsibility in which the member of a community is held responsible for
things he or she did not participate in, but which were done in his or her name, since
she or he is a member of the community (Arendt 2003b: 154). To complete a quotation
mentioned above, the question raised by Arendt is whether responsibility starts with
the possibility to act as such. Her answer is unequivocal:
[N]o moral, individual and personal, standards of conduct will ever be able to
excuse us from collective responsibility. This vicarious responsibility for things
we have not done, this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we
are entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live our lives
37 Another word for solitude is living-with-myself (Arendt 2003a: 97); for political aspects of Arendts
concept of thinking in solitude see Berkowitz (2010).
38 Judgment has been discussed by Arendt in her last writings. I agree with Shai Lavi, concerning the
prevalence of judgment, although action, thinking and judgment do not exclude each other for the distinction between good and evil: Her inquiry into judgment should not be read as an attempt to come to
terms with, become reconciled with, or forgive the atrocities of human action and the failings of philosophical thinking. In the final analysis, judgment did not provide Arendt with a solution to the questions
that troubled her so badly: how to distinguish good from evil or demarcate philosophical thinking from
political thought. For her, judgment emerged as at best a deeper way of reformulating precisely these
challenges (Lavi 2010: 234).

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661

not by ourselves but among our fellow men, and that the faculty of action,
which, after all, is the political faculty par excellence, can be actualized only in
one of the manifold forms of human community (Arendt 2003b: 158).
Arendts hidden ethics is a positive ethics advocating action and political judgment.
Yet, since action is primarily defined by being public and related to others, and not by
its subjective or intentional character, it is primarily related to the in-between of
human beings.
As seen above, the in-between of human beings is the worldly space of appearance,
and the realm where political situations of acting in concert are possible, guaranteeing
freedom. The responsibility that Arendt emphasizes is to preserve this space of appearance. In light of this perspective, promise and forgiveness, the two attitudes towards
the other Arendt defines as constitutive for a political life, can be reintegrated in an
ethics focused on the freedom to have a space of appearance, as well as in the responsibility to preserve the world. For Arendt, promise and forgiveness are gestures towards freedom; they are not part of personal ethics or morality, but are conditions for
acting in concert (Arendt 1958: 241, 244).39 Therefore, an ethics starting from
Arendts approach could offer a new perspective in which the world our world
with its various dimensions, comes first.
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