Arendt and
Individualism
BY GEORGE KATEB
"The recent rusticarion of hitherto unpublished writings
by Hannah Arendt must have some effect on how we
understand her contribution to political theory. Out of a large
archive some of the specimens that have been published have
the power, in their richness, both to re-orient us and disorient
us as we seek to come to terms with one of the greatest political
theorists of the century. One effect of these writings is to send
us back with new eyes to the Arendt books we already knew
and thought we understood, while another effect is to make us
wonder at the apparent discrepancy between what Arendt
published and what she withheld (cither kept to herself or
confined to those who heard her presentation) on some major
theoretical issues.
I experienced both these effects in reading the part of
“Philosophy and Politics: The Problem of Action and Thought
After the French Revolution” (1954) that Jerome Kohn edited
and published in Social Research (in Spring 1990), under the
title “Philosophy and Politics” (Arendt, 1990).! (The whole
manuscript was publicly delivered but never published by
Arendt.) Thanks to Professor Kohn, I have been able to read
the full manuscript, and it is continuously absorbing. But it is
especially the printed part that helps as it were to re-open the
pages of earlier essays and such works as Rahel Varnhagen and
The Human Condition; and on the specific matter of the
connection between citizenship and Socratic examination and
self-examination, it establishes a large gap between itself and
later work Arendt chose to publish, especially “Civil Disobedi-
ence,” “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” and The Life of
SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Winter 1994)
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