Arendt and the Modern State

Variations on Hegel in The Origins of Totalitarianism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8044973
AutoresRoy T Tsao (autor de correspondencia)
Año2004
Volumen66
Número1
Páginas105-138
Fecha de publicación2004-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670500042492
OpenAlexW2168258409
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas28

Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), unlike her later books, is centrally concerned with the nature and fate of the modern state. The book presents a series of political pathologies – antisemitism, imperialism, tribalism, and totalitarianism – that Arendt regards as the result of failures in the state's dual mission to integrate diverse social groups into a single body politic, and to uphold the uniform rule of law for all. Her underlying conception of the state bears a striking, though unacknowledged affinity to that of Hegel. Like Hegel, moreover, she argues that citizens' mutual recognition of one another's human rights, as mediated through state institutions, is an indispensable condition for full human self-consciousness and agency. Her version of this argument is developed first through an excursus on the origins and effects of racism among Europeans living in Africa, and then through an analysis of the unique plight of stateless refugees

Argument (complex analysis · Body politic · Tribalism · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty