Arendt on the Political

Shows how Hannah Arendt opened up new ways of thinking about politics and a new approach to interpreting political history.

David Arndt (Author)

9781108498319, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 October 2019

290 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

'David Arndt's book is an excellent exposition of Arendt's political thought. Anyone interested in Arendt would benefit from the clear presentation and analysis of the main concepts and ideas Arendt thought through in her writings; the careful distinctions he offers between the meanings Arendt gave to these concepts and the more common understanding of them; and the useful theoretical and historical background by which Arndt contextualizes Arendt's contributions to political theory.' Shmuel Lederman, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

What is politics? How is politics different from other spheres of human life? What is behind the debasement of political life today? This book argues that the most illuminating answers to these questions have come from Hannah Arendt. Arendt held that Western philosophy has never had a 'pure concept of the political', and that political philosophers have been guided and misguided by the assumptions implicit in their metaphysical questions. Her project was 'to look at politics … with eyes unclouded by philosophy', and to retrieve the non-theoretical understanding of politics implicit in ancient Greek literature and history. David Arndt's original and accessible study shows how Arendt reworked some of the basic concepts of political philosophy, which in turn led her to a re-interpretation of American political history and even to a profoundly original reading of the US Declaration of Independence.

Introduction
1. On Arendt
2. A way of thought
3. A pure concept of the political
4. Thinking before theory
5. Classical political philosophy
6. Rethinking the classical legacy
7. On politics and revolution
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF]