Arendt and the Modern State

Variations on Hegel in The Origins of Totalitarianism

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8044973
AutoresRoy T Tsao (autor correspondente)
Ano2004
Volume66
Fascículo1
Páginas105-138
Data de publicação2004-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670500042492
OpenAlexW2168258409
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências 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