Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(De)Constructing the
Human as Human
Institution: A Refiection
on the Coherence of
Hannah Arendt's Practicai
Philosophy
"ARENDT'S THEOREM"
First a few words on what I called "Arendt's theorem" and the notion of
the "rights to have rights." It is well knovm that, in the last chapter of
part II of The Origins of Totalitarianism, "The Decline of the Nation-State
and the End of the Rights of Man," Arendt has developed a provocative
thesis, grounded in the observation of the tragic consequences of the
imperialist wars in terms of the creation of masses of "stateless" refri-
gees and politically "superfluous" humans. Those humans who have
become superfluous but are still physically there are practically deprived
of any protection and permanently threatened with elimination. This
is a consequence of the history of the nation-state, where belonging to
ARCHE AORISTOS
This brings me to my second argument, the one concerning isonomia. In
a sense, "isonomia" denotes exactly this: an institution whereby individ-
uals reciprocally grant each other rights in the public sphere, the right
to speak, to begin with, which is perhaps the "concrete" anthropological
figure of the "right to have rights," the right to claim rights. Both in
The Human Condition and in On Revolution—^written during the years that
range between the Hungarian revolution against Bolshevism and the
triple catastrophic events of the late sixties: the Vietnam War, the 1968
student uprisings, and the Six Day War between Israel and several Arab
countries—she would insist on the typically "sophistic" idea that it is
not the case that social and political institutions bring inequalities and
tyrannies where there existed a "natural" equality and freedom of men.
She would insist on just the opposite, that the city's institutions, in the
case of isonomia, introduce equality as equality in the public sphere,
with respect to power and authority, and, as a consequence, freedom,
where there previously existed only inequality and domination. They
produce a "second nature," which is probably preceded by no actual
nature but only a virtual, indeterminate possibility.
But then something very strange and interesting happens, which
you will find for example in The Human Condition (Arendt, 1998: 32),
and also in On Revolution (Arendt, 1968: 37). The crucial Greek reference
is not Aristotle's definition of the "citizen" in terms of reciprocity of