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International Political Theory

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Oxford
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‘This book advances our understanding of Hannah Arendt’s ideas of action and
political life with an original and provocative focus on the idea of the daimon.
Tchir critically assesses Arendt’s encounter with Heidegger, Marx, and Kant,
leaving us with a better understanding of her and the political theorists with
whom she grappled. As a result, we are left with new insights into how Arendt’s
political theory can speak to the contemporary condition.’
– Professor Anthony Lang, University of St. Andrews, UK
 Trevor Tchir

Hannah Arendt’s
Theory of Political
Action
Daimonic Disclosure of the ‘Who’
Trevor Tchir
Department of Law and Politics
Algoma University
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada

International Political Theory

ISBN 978-3-319-53437-4 ISBN 978-3-319-53438-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53438-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936957

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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 To my mother, Sharon Tchir,
a worldly woman of courage and principle
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would especially like to thank Catherine Kellogg and Koula Mellos for
their invaluable mentorship over the years.
I would also like to thank some of the other inspiring professors of
politics at the University of Alberta and the University of Ottawa, from
whom I had the pleasure to learn in the classroom: Don Carmichael, Anna
Yeatman, Steve Patten, Janine Brodie, Douglas Moggach, Gilles Labelle,
André Vachet, François Houle, Salam Hawa, and Boniface Kaboré.
Many thanks to those who provided helpful advice on different parts of
the manuscript during its early stages, in particular, David Kahane,
Patchen Markell, Mary Dietz, Phillip Hansen, Charles Barbour, and
Roger Epp. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers of later versions.
Many cheers and thanks to former colleagues or fellow graduate stu-
dents with whom I have enjoyed collaborating, reading, and reflecting, or
who offered a particular word or act of encouragement along the way:
Jean-Jacques Defert, Dan Webb, Michael Kulicki, Ian Watts, James
Czank, Amy Swiffen, Stéphanie Martens, Grayson Hunt, Dion Blythe,
Magdalena Zolkos, Robert Nichols, Courtney Mason, David Reddall,
Robert Meynell, Marielle Rivard, Allyson Rogers, Cody McCarroll,
Omid Payrow Shabani, Mickey Vallee, and Marc Spooner.
Thanks to my colleagues and students at Algoma University for making
it a fun, engaging, and purposeful place to work.
I appreciate the professionalism and friendliness of everyone I have
worked with at Palgrave Macmillan. Thanks also to Continuum,
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary
Trust for their generous permission to re-publish previously printed material.

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Finally, a very personal thank-you to my wife, Kristy, my brother,

Stephen, and my mother, Sharon, for their dependable support, interest,
and love. Much of this book was written just after my father left this world,
and my own thoughts on Arendt’s account of worldly immortality are
informed by the experience of grieving him. So, I would like to honor his
memory here, and I like to think that he would find cause for ‘nostrovia!’
with the completion of this book.
 PERMISSIONS

Parts of Chapter 2 were previously published in “Arendtian Action:

Performative Disclosure of the ‘Who’” in Declensions of the Self: A Bestiary
of Modernity, edited by Jean-Jacques Defert, Trevor Tchir, and Dan Webb.
Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. Published with the per-
mission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Parts of Chapters 2, 3, and 4 were previously published in “Daimon
Appearances and the Heideggerian Influence in Arendt’s Account of
Political Action” in Action and Appearance: Ethics and the Politics of
Writing in Hannah Arendt, edited by Anna Yeatman, Philip Hansen,
Magdalena Zolkos, and Charles Barbour. New York: Continuum, 2011.
Published with the permission of Continuum International Publishing
Group.
“History of Political Theory – Machiavelli, Niccolo.” Lecture at the
University of California, Berkeley, 1955. Copyright © 1955 by Hannah
Arendt. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of
the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust.
“Political Theory of Kant.” Lecture at the University of California,
Berkeley, 1955. Copyright © 1955 by Hannah Arendt. Reprinted by
permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the Hannah Arendt
Bluecher Literary Trust.
“Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” Seminar at University of Chicago, Chicago,
IL, 1964. Copyright © 1964 by Hannah Arendt. Reprinted by permission

ix
x PERMISSIONS

of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher

Literary Trust.
“Philosophy and Politics: the Problem of Action and Thought after the
French Revolution.” Lecture, 1954. Copyright © 1954 by Hannah
Arendt. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf
of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust.
“Plato.” Seminar at Columbia University, New York, NY, 1960.
Copyright © 1960 by Hannah Arendt. Reprinted by permission of
Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher
Literary Trust.
“Marx, Karl.” Seminar at University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1966.
Copyright © 1966 by Hannah Arendt. Reprinted by permission of
Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher
Literary Trust.
“Philosophy and Politics, What is Political Philosophy?” Lectures and
seminar at New School for Social Research, New York, NY, 1969.
Copyright © 1969 by Hannah Arendt. Reprinted by permission of
Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher
Literary Trust.
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Action’s Disclosure of the ‘Who’ and the ‘World’ 15

3 Appearances of the Divine ‘Daimon’ 65

4 Aletheia: The Influence of Heidegger 97

5 Labor and ‘World Alienation’: Arendt’s Critique

of Marx 125

6 The Dignity of Doxa: Politicizing Kant’s

Aesthetic Judgment 171

7 Forgotten Fragments: Arendt’s Critique

of Teleological Philosophies of History 205

8 Conclusion 235

Index 247

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Hannah Arendt made some of the twentieth century’s most important

contributions to the study of political life. Her work shows a commitment
to political freedom, human dignity, and plurality, while it invites readers
to act in ways inspired by the principle of responsible care for the public
world that sustains these. Arendt’s writing was largely a response to the
horrors of totalitarianism in the middle of the last century, but it remains
just as pertinent now. Today’s students of politics can find in Arendt’s
thought reflections to inspire the difficult but crucial tasks of defending
the human rights of refugees, determining terms of political recognition
that respect human freedom and difference, seeking political reconciliation
between antagonists, contesting abuses of sovereign state power, protect-
ing public spaces and opportunities for free and meaningful citizen
engagement, and deliberating publically across very different perspectives
in ways that can overcome violent conflict.
Arendt was born in 1906 in Linden, a suburb of Hanover, to a secular
Jewish family. She grew up in Königsberg and Berlin, and from 1924 to
1929, she studied philosophy, theology, and Greek philology in Marburg,
Heidelberg, and Freiburg with leading German intellectuals, most notably
Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. Arendt married Günther Stern in
1929 in Berlin and was briefly jailed by Gestapo in 1933 for collecting
anti-Semitic material in the Prussian State Library, under Zionist leader
Kurt Blumenfeld’s urging, to be used as proof of the increasingly dangerous
situation of Jews in Germany. Arendt left Germany and soon began her

© The Author(s) 2017 1

T. Tchir, Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Political Action,
International Political Theory, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53438-1_1
2 T. TCHIR

activist work in Paris for Youth Aliyah, which assisted German and eastern
European Jewish youth to immigrate safely to Palestine. In 1937, she was
stripped of her German citizenship and her marriage to Stern ended in
divorce. In 1941, Arendt was imprisoned at Camp Gurs in Nazi occupied
France, but she escaped, and reached the United States along with her
second husband, Heinrich Blücher. They settled in New York City, which
served as Arendt’s adopted home until her death in 1975. Along with her
writing in both German and English, Arendt was a highly influential and
accomplished professor, lecturing at numerous American universities,
including the New School, Princeton, Cornell, University of Chicago,
Berkeley, and Wesleyan.
During her lifetime, Arendt was read in the United States not only as an
analyst of totalitarianism, but also as a critical voice and proponent of
direct political action and civil disobedience during the Civil Rights
Movement, the nuclear arms race, and the Vietnam War. However,
Arendt received the most public attention during the intense controversy
surrounding her coverage for The New Yorker of the 1961 trial in
Jerusalem, of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat who organized the
transportation of Jews to concentration camps. In her coverage of the
trial, also published two years later as Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963),
Arendt emphasizes the ‘banal’ nature of Eichmann’s routinized and
unthinking evil, while she insinuates some Jews in self-protective coordi-
nation with the Nazis. Jewish philosopher and historian Gershom
Scholem, in a painful and public dispute with Arendt, saw her account as
a betrayal, a sign of a lack of love of the Jewish people.1
Arendt is a critical spectator of a wide array of political phenomena. She
explores the social, economic, and political experiences of European Jews
in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Rahel Varnhagen (1957),
Eichmann in Jerusalem, and Men in Dark Times (1968). In The Origins
of Totalitarianism, Arendt uncovers the constitutive factors in the unpre-
cedented appearance of this modern form of rule, including anti-Semitism,
imperialism—which involved the increase in stateless people whose human
rights found no adequate legal defense—and a particular combination of
totalitarian ideology and terror.
In The Human Condition (1958), Arendt develops a phenomenology
of the human faculties of the vita activa—labor, work, and action—as she
traces the changing ideas and practices that have shifted dominant percep-
tions over the relative worth and proper location of these faculties within
public and private spaces. Here, Arendt presents political action as the
 INTRODUCTION 3

highest faculty of the vita activa, because it is through action—the per-

formance of words and deeds in the company of others—that human
beings experience freedom, individuate themselves, disclose realities of
their shared world, and respond to the ontological conditions of plurality
and natality, the capacity to begin. Arendt shows that although praxis
(action) had once been venerated by the ancient Greeks, it began to lose
its place at the center of the West’s understanding of politics and the good
life when Plato prioritized the vita contemplativa as the highest form of
life and applied the instrumental logic of poiesis (craft) to politics, con-
ceived not as ‘acting in common,’ but as ‘rule’ of one or some over others.
Arendt shows that freedom experienced through political action is con-
stantly threatened both by the instrumental logic of totalitarianism that is
operative within the Western tradition since Plato, as well as by mass
consumer society, which celebrates labor as the highest human faculty.
In The Human Condition, Arendt’s noble aim is to rescue political action
from its historical and contemporary concealment, and to rejuvenate its
power to establish public spaces in which freedom may shine.
In On Revolution (1963), Arendt examines the challenges of finding an
authoritative secular republic for the preservation and continuous aug-
mentation of the revolutionary spirit of freedom, through the immanent
collective power of ‘promise making.’ Here and in On Violence (1970),
Arendt develops the distinction, first made in The Human Condition,
between the non-violent, dialogical, and world-disclosive essence of col-
lective power in political action, on one hand, and the instrumental and
mute force of violence on the other.
In The Life of the Mind (1971) and her posthumously published
Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1982), Arendt focuses her atten-
tion on the faculties of the mind: thinking, willing, and judging. In these
works and others, notably chapters from Between Past and Future (1961),
Arendt explores the possibility for political action, moral thinking, and
critical judgment to be effective at creating and sustaining a world in
which human freedom, dignity, and plurality may flourish, in a contem-
porary secular world after totalitarianism, where the certainty and sanction
of the most cherished ideals and authoritative standards of the Western
tradition have been decisively thrown into question.
In this book, I want to suggest a particular interpretive lens for the
study of Arendt’s central concept of political action, which is developed
most fully in The Human Condition, On Revolution, and ‘What Is
Freedom?’ from Between Past and Future. In her phenomenological
4 T. TCHIR

account of how political freedom is realized, an account that is intrinsically

linked to her critique of sovereignty, Arendt argues that political action
discloses ‘who’ the actor is, as it discloses the ‘world.’ According to Mary
Dietz, Arendt develops her action conception of politics and her ‘imagistic
symbol of the space of appearance’ in order to ‘create a healing illusion
and a disruptive countermemory, attempting to reach over the historical
abyss created by Auschwitz, and break the mastery of the Holocaust,’2 and
that this is best understood through the centrality of the notion of the
disclosed ‘who.’ Dietz writes, ‘The luminosity of this space, where the
condition of being a unique, individual, human personality is fulfilled in
the ordinary glory of speaking and doing, is the absolute counter to ‘the
disintegration of personality’ that was achieved in the extermination
camps. . . . ’3 By maintaining focus on the central idea that action discloses
a unique ‘who,’ as it discloses the ‘world,’ I want to raise a set of questions
and tensions in Arendt’s work that illuminate elements of the contempor-
ary political condition.
Arendt conceives action as deeds and speech that disclose new or
unexpected aspects of the world in ways that interrupt normalizing pro-
cesses. She holds that action is only meaningful through the disclosure of
who the actor uniquely is, a form of revelation that she sees as the basis of
human dignity, a redemptive reconciliation to one’s existence. Following
the Machiavellian notions of virtu and fortuna, Arendt’s ‘who’ is disclosed
in the dynamic between the actor’s unique deeds and speech and the
objective political, socio-economic, temporal, and spatial world conditions
that they respond to. Because the disclosure of the ‘who’ is also the
disclosure of the ‘world,’ action serves to reveal and to contest current
hegemonic discourses as elements of the context of action. Considering
that the spaces for meaningful citizen engagement and responsive critique
of the normalizing discourses of governments and corporations is under
continuous threat, Arendt provides a profound and valuable articulation of
the implications of this threat and rethinks freedom as realized only in
engagement in the public world, through continual performance among
others, and in the affirmation of new possibilities for further action.
Arendt’s differentiation between the ‘who’ and the ‘what’of the actor
follows Heidegger. While the ‘who’is the unique, irreplaceable individual,
the ‘what’is the constative collection of characteristics or categories that
the actor shares with others. This difference highlights that the disclosure
of the ‘who’ raises action above mere instrumentality and utility, to a form
of activity that is an experiential good in itself, and that the ‘who’ has no
 INTRODUCTION 5

fixed essence. Arendt’s theory of political action helps readers to re-con-

ceptualize the individuated actor or political subject not as a sovereign and
self-transparent self whose action expresses an authentic individual essence
or constative ‘what,’ but rather as a decentered and ecstatic ‘who’ whose
action, in plurality with others, reveals meaningful dimensions of the
shared world and of the agent’s contemporary and historical situation.
Action is not seen as an expression of a pre-given substance internal to the
subject but rather as a phenomenon of discovering the world, discovering
others, and of disclosing who one is in terms of one’s performative, often
shifting and fragmented response to world events. Arendt’s account of
action’s disclosure of the ‘who’ and the ‘world’ requires the actor’s per-
formative interaction with equal others and its recognition by spectators.
The worldly existence of the ‘who’ is constantly negotiated, over time and
in narrative form, between the performing actor, actors with whom they
collaborate or confront, and the various spectators who judge the meaning
of their action. The idea that no actor can stand in a position of sovereign
control with respect to their life story, that no one can make their story,
extends to a critical displacement of the notion of freedom understood as
sovereignty, as well as a critique of political projects that attempt to realize
a telos (end) immanent to history. Arendt’s model aims to avoid relations
of domination associated with the concept of sovereign rule and rejuve-
nate the pluralistic public space of intersubjective appearances. She sees
both the alignment of freedom with sovereignty, as well as the attempt to
determine or interpret action as a realization of the end of history, as
residing at the heart of totalitarian movements and as stultifying plurality,
which she sees as an existential condition for human action and freedom.
Arendt’s distinction between the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ also offers a
fruitful critique of the communitarian perspective, which sees the self as
realized by participating deliberatively in constructing a community’s
shared sense of purpose and conception of the good life. The political
community to which Arendt refers is the pluralistic community of specta-
tors who judge political phenomena in a common world, but from
different perspectives, rather than a community defined by—and seeking
recognition according to—a shared opinion, view of the good, or authen-
tic way of being. To define one’s public identity only by the community of
‘whats’ to which the actor belongs is to conceal the unique, performative
‘who.’ Arendt’s distinction empowers actors to contest reified public
identities through their political action so that they are not defined—and
therefore governed—based on the spectator’s pre-conceived notions
6 T. TCHIR

of their group’s essence. Rather, public identities serve as shifting foci of

discursive exchange through which the personal ‘who’ of each actor, the
ways by which the actor negotiates and explores their shared ‘whats’ over
time, may shine through.
My second main line of questioning in this book concerns the perplex-
ities facing actors and spectators in the modern, secular public realm, with
its complicated relationship to the residual vocabulary of transcendence.
Arendt explicitly rejects a Platonic two-world metaphysics that designates
a realm of truer or ontologically higher a-temporal Being, apart from its
derivative phenomenal appearances. She argues that the principles that
inspire political actions have no ontological grounding apart from the
human acts that disclose them and the spectator stories that preserve
them. Arendt has thus been interpreted as offering a post-metaphysical
account of the intersubjective engendering of meaning in the public realm.
Some interpret her account of political action as altogether removed from
questions of the actor’s relationship to transcendence in general. But
transcendence is central to Arendtian action and thinking. Most post-
metaphysical interpretations of Arendt have overlooked a key aspect of
her account of action and thinking: that action and thinking engage what
Arendt argues appear as the ‘divine element’ in human beings. Arendt’s
references to the ‘daimon’ metaphor offer rich insight into the actor’s and
thinker’s relationship with the transcendent and divine. It is an illuminat-
ing, but under-scrutinized figure in Arendt’s project. Understanding the
‘who’ in light of the ‘daimon’ metaphor problematizes the distinction,
usually read in Arendt, between the political space of appearance and
another spiritual, transcendent, or divine realm, inconsequential to mod-
ern secular politics.
The ‘daimon’ is a figure from ancient Greek religion that emerges not
only in Arendt’s own books and lecture notes but also in Plato’s Socratic
dialogues and the myth of Er, as well as in thinkers with whom Arendt
engaged in developing her account of action, thinking, and judgment,
particularly in Heidegger’s notion of aletheia as Dasein’s disclosure of
Being, Jaspers’ ‘valid personality,’ and Kant’s notion of ‘genius.’ The
‘daimon’ is a divine mediator between gods and humans, variously under-
stood as the genius, voice of conscience, guardian, and birth attendant
that accompanies mortals through life, whispering guidance, but never
visible to the actors themselves. Arendt chose her metaphors carefully, so it
is significant that she evokes the ‘daimon’ as part of her focal account of
how the ‘who’ is disclosed through political action.
 INTRODUCTION 7

[I]t is more than likely that the ‘who,’ which appears so clearly and unmis-
takably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the daimon
in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always
looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he
encounters.4

The ‘daimon’ mediates between human beings of this world and the
seemingly unknowable place from which comes the capacity to act and
think. In action, the human being becomes an ecstatic discloser of Being—
of principles, meanings, and new possibilities—in excess of the act’s
immediate consequence. Further, the dualistic activity of thinking, exem-
plified by Socrates’ interaction with his ‘daimon,’ appears as though it
accesses a divine element in human beings in that it temporarily removes
the thinker from the world to engage in a capacity that seems, uncannily,
to come both from inside and from outside of the thinker. Arendt engages
the ‘daimon’ figure to help her carry out her de-transcendentalization of
the standards for human action, thinking, and judgment, a task that is
intricately woven with her critique of sovereignty,while she illustrates and
performs some of the insoluble perplexities involved in these human
capacities, whose ultimate origin within each individual, as a center of
experience and source of ‘the new,’ remain concealed and thus continue to
be understood in terms that often fall back on references to a divine origin.
Arendt’s references to the ‘daimon’ figure, which mediates between
human actors of this world and a divine principle suggesting a realm
beyond, invites readers to meditate on a tension that marks our secular
age. On one hand, no one metaphysical principle can authoritatively
validate actions or opinions beyond doubt; there is no absolute divine or
historical telos that governs or grounds human affairs. On the other hand,
much of the legitimating concepts of modern politics retain a residual
language of transcendence that implies the existence of such an absolute
beyond human consent, to provide contingent action with a more solid,
authorizing ground.
These two main themes of the book are developed most directly in
Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 begins by introducing Arendt’s notion of
freedom as experienced through political action that discloses ‘who’ the
actor is, as it discloses the ‘world.’ To elucidate Arendt’s concept of
political action, I foreground the distinction she makes between the
political metaphors of productive and performance art, metaphors com-
monly used in ancient Greek thought. This distinction sheds light on the
8 T. TCHIR

fundamental features of action as non-sovereign, as the actualization of

natality, and as conditioned by plurality. I proceed to examine the role of
the spectator who retrospectively identifies the ‘who’ within a coherent
narrative. Here, the importance of a stable and renewed space of appear-
ance is developed through the metaphor of theatre. The chapter concludes
by exploring Arendt’s thesis that freedom depends on action’s continuous
augmentation of the constitutional principles established by the founding
moment of the political community and her distinction, made within her
account of revolution, between power and violence.
In Chapter 3, I explore several appearances of the ‘daimon’ figure in
Arendt’s work and in the work of thinkers with whom Arendt engaged. I
argue that Arendt understands human action and thinking as inescapably
revealing the illusion of a divine presence, through action’s ecstatic dis-
closure of meaning, through the ‘two-in-one’ structure of moral thinking,
and through one’s public performance of thought as a ‘valid personality’
acting and judging within ‘boundary situations,’ concepts adopted from
Jaspers. In this chapter I also explore Arendt’s worldly transformation of
Augustine’s account of love, her examination of the temptation of political
theology’s sanction of an absolute within modern, secular projects of
political foundation, and the persistence of the grammar of transcendence
in modern politics.
Arendt writes that human beings show their humanitas, their personal
element or character, largely through their choice of company.
Accordingly, Arendt develops her reflections on political action in con-
versation with her own chosen company. The next four chapters are
organized with this in mind, each focused on the study of action’s dis-
closure of the ‘who’ and the ‘world,’ yet expanding to broader areas of
Arendt’s work and analyzing Arendt’s conversations with key figures of
the Western tradition of political philosophy.
Chapter 4 traces the influence of German existentialist and phenomen-
ologist, Martin Heidegger, on Arendt’s thought. I begin by exploring
how Heidegger’s critique of traditional ontology and his depiction of
Dasein’s disclosive relation to Being influences Arendt’s conception of
action in non-teleological terms and the disclosure of the ‘who’ as a
decentered phenomenon in which the ‘world’ is also disclosed. The cen-
tral notion that Heidegger recasts here is that of aletheia, the Greek
concept of truth as ‘unconcealment.’ I proceed to show the connection
between aletheia and Heidegger’s particular understanding of freedom as
an openness to Being, which influences Arendt’s own definition of
 INTRODUCTION 9

freedom as non-sovereign action within a shared world. I revisit

Heidegger’s lectures on the Aristotelian modes of aletheia with special
attention to the difference between techne (technical know-how) and
phronesis (practical wisdom), the respective modes of disclosure of poiesis
and praxis. In these lectures readers can find the starting point for Arendt’s
own development of the idea that action discloses the ‘who’ as its arche
(origin), for its own sake and through performance that discloses condi-
tions of the situation to which it responds. While Arendt adopts certain
aspects of Heidegger’s account of authentic Dasein, she transforms it to
emphasize the natality of action and to restore the dignity of opinion in
the public sphere. To conclude, I study Heidegger’s influential critique of
technological enframing as the dominant modern mode of disclosure, one
that turns the individual into a master of reserve resources, rather than a
participant in the ecstatic revealing of Being.
Chapter 5 engages with Arendt’s critical interpretation of Karl Marx to
highlight some of Arendt’s ideas most fecund for reflection on the contem-
porary global political situation, including her defense of the ‘right to have
rights.’ Arendt argues that Marx’s concept of ‘socialized humanity’ has both
reflected and further encouraged modern phenomena that have distorted the
disclosure of the ‘who’ and of the ‘world,’ namely the ‘glorification of labor,’
the ‘rise of the social,’ and ‘world alienation.’ Arendt criticizes Marx for
positing labor, rather than action and speech, as the activity wherein humans
disclose their identities and experience freedom. She holds that Marx’s ‘glor-
ification of labor’ also obfuscates the distinction between the human’s unend-
ing metabolism with nature and their world-constitutive work and encourages
a harmonization of interests and opinions that threatens the conditions of
plurality required for the proper disclosure and judgment of the ‘who.’
Arendt charges Marx’s stateless and classless image of ‘socialized
humanity’ as further engendering the ‘rise of the social,’ a blurring of
the realms of the private and of the political. In Marx’s socialization of the
accumulation process, private property is sacrificed for full productive
cooperation, thus threatening the private space necessary for intimacy,
for psychic care, and to give depth of meaning to an actor’s rise into the
public. Arendt is also critical of Marx’s image of ‘socialized humanity,’ for
its lack of protection of the legal rights of the citizen, as well as for its
threat to a constitutionally protected public space in which public personas
may appear to exchange their diverse opinions in a depersonalized and
non-violent way. Arendt posits every human being’s ‘right to have rights’
as essential to universal freedom, dignity, and self-disclosure, but points to
10 T. TCHIR

the historic and contemporary failures of states and international political

organizations at defending human rights universally. This is primarily due
to the dominant global conception of rights as belonging to citizens of the
particular sovereign states that can defend and fulfill them, and to the
sovereign authority of these states to deny citizenship to certain human
beings. Being herself a refugee, Arendt’s thought on human rights and
stateless people represents one of her most important lasting legacies, as it
continues to guide international reflection on the importance and perplex-
ities of human rights.
According to Arendt, human beings as homo faber create the material
world of cultural artifacts, the in-between space that renders action and the
disclosure of the ‘who’ intelligible. She criticizes Marx for encouraging a
phenomenon of ‘world alienation,’ wherein the individual confronts
themselves as the only source of meaning and value, and where the mean-
ing and disclosive power of such cultural works is distorted by their
shifting use values and exchange values, disclosed according to the indivi-
dual’s instrumental, consumer, or producer logic. In this chapter, I ques-
tion the fairness of Arendt’s criticism, since she tends to underestimate the
rational, world-constitutive, and self-disclosive dimensions of Marx’s
notion of labor. Since Arendt holds that the ‘who’ cannot be disclosed
even by world-constitutive work, let alone endless labor tied to necessity, I
proceed by distinguishing Arendt’s concept of disclosive action from G.W.
F. Hegel’s and Marx’s work model of freedom and self-actualization.
Finally, I revisit Arendt’s critique of the ‘social question’ within modern
revolutions and her identification of a properly political mentality. I
address critics who see in Arendt’s distinction between freedom and
necessity, a prioritization of political freedom at the cost of concerns for
social justice and material equality.
Chapter 6 is a study of Arendt’s creative adaptation of Immanuel Kant’s
theory of aesthetic judgment as a model for political judgment. Arendt’s
theory of judgment serves as a model for a community of spectators to
observe the particularity of actors, objects, and events and to deliberate
about their meaning, without the guidance of absolute standards. The
responsibility to judge the unprecedented arises after the appearance of
totalitarianism, which dissolves the reliability of commonly held ethical
standards, yet introduces horrific acts whose novelty must still somehow
be understood. The spectator arrives at a judgment informed both by the
unmediated specificity of his initial taste in relation to the phenomenon and
by their having imagined the standpoints of all other spectators. This
 INTRODUCTION 11

reflective judgment serves as an ethical limitation to the free, agonistic

action through which the ‘who’ is disclosed, and is crucial to non-violent,
responsible ‘world’ building given the condition of human plurality. As
reflective judgment occurs according to a sensus communis, I proceed to
question whether the purpose of a community of spectators is to reach
rational consensus and the convergence of opinion, or whether the activity
of intersubjective judgment is an end in itself as an affirmation of freedom
and plurality. Next, I question to what extent an actor is capable of willing
the meaning or inspiring principle of their intended act, or to what extent it
remains a matter out of their control. I illuminate the similarity between
the Kantian ‘genius’ and ‘daimon,’ whose originality are both rendered
intelligible by the judgment of the spectator. Kant describes the ‘daimon’
as the spirit that inspires the actor, but whose ‘wings must be clipped’5 in
order to be made intelligible to an audience of spectators that the actor
anticipates.
Chapter 7 explores Arendt’s critique of teleological philosophies of
history, in particular, those of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Arendt sees these
approaches as posing a danger to human plurality, spontaneity, and dignity,
not only through their form of dialectical logic that influenced totalitarian
ideology, but also through their emphasis on long term, necessary, uni-
versal processes when explaining the meaning of human acts. Arendt argues
that these approaches misrecognize the meanings of particular events and
actions, and that history should instead be understood in terms of its
unique, transformative, and exemplary events. Even if an act would be
considered an objective failure from the standpoint of a progressive, uni-
versal history, it should be judged according to the meanings and relation-
ships that it discloses, the principles that inspired the actors, what it reveals
about the dignity of unique human beings in facing specific world condi-
tions, and the ‘virtuosity’ of these ‘whos,’ the ways in which they acted and
spoke in the face of complex political situations. Arendt develops her own
alternative concept of the ‘who’s’ relation to time and history in response
to Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin. She suggests that the human being
constantly thinks and acts in a gap between past and future, that they can
interrupt existing processes because of action’s natality, and leave a story
behind that discloses, in a narrative cosmos separate from universal pro-
gress narratives, certain truths about the world or certain unexpected
human possibilities. Arendt judges Benjamin’s fragmentary historiography
as a more appropriate modern historical approach, one that better preserves
individual disclosures of the unique ‘who.’
12 T. TCHIR

By studying Arendt’s critique of modern teleological philosophies of

history, one is again brought to the heart of an illuminating tension in
Arendt’s thought. On one hand, in certain moments of her work, Arendt
describes human acts and thoughts as manifesting a divine element in
human beings, or as at least revealing an inescapable ‘existential illusion’
of the presence of the divine. On the other hand, Arendt is broadly
concerned with distancing action, thinking, and judging from any residual
discourse of transcendence and from the closely connected idea of a
teleological force immanent to history. This tension in Arendt’s work
helps readers confront some compelling questions. Can the ‘who’ of the
actor and the principles that inspire their action be meaningfully disclosed
through a spectator narrative that focuses only on the discrete event,
divorced from the context of a universal history? Does it make sense to
speak of an individual’s action and thought as disclosing the appearance
of a divine element in human beings, while rejecting the notion of a
universal teleological force that drives human history? Finally, can actors
and spectators in a pluralistic, secular public realm ever separate themselves
fully from the residual language of transcendence or of a force immanent
to human action and thought, driving it towards some universal end? In
questioning to what extent meaningful stories can be told about actors
and their struggles in a manner that avoids the teleology of modern
progress narratives, members of political communities may rethink how
to read their collective past and how they imagine the prospective mean-
ings of their own contemporary actions.

NOTES
1. Arendt, Jewish Writings, 465.
2. Dietz, “Arendt and the Holocaust,” 100.
3. Ibid., 101–02.
4. Arendt, Human Condition, 159–60.
5. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 206.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1958.
Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.
 INTRODUCTION 13

Arendt, Hannah. Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman. Revised Edition.
Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1974.
Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. Enlarged edition. New York: Penguin
Books, 1977.
Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.
Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind. San Diego: Harcourt, 1978.
Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Edited by Ronald Beiner.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem. Revised and enlarged edition. New
York, Penguin Books, 1994.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, 1994.
Arendt, Hannah. Men in Dark Times. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company,
1995.
Arendt, Hannah. The Jewish Writings. Edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron
H. Feldman. New York: Schocken Books, 2007.
Dietz, Mary G. “Arendt and the Holocaust.” In The Cambridge Companion to
Hannah Arendt, edited by Dana Villa. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000.
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgment. Translated by J.H. Bernard. Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2000.
 CHAPTER 2

Action’s Disclosure of the ‘Who’

and the ‘World’

Hannah Arendt argues, contrary to much of the Western tradition of

political philosophy, that freedom should not be equated with sover-
eignty, nor with the determining of the will by a rational maxim.
Freedom is, instead, experienced through action: the performance of
deeds and speech in a public space with and before others. George
Kateb suggests that in Arendt’s account, authentic political action through
which freedom is experienced includes both the initial foundation and the
subsequent protection of the public sphere against internal erosion. By
Kateb’s reading, action is at its most authentic when it ruptures existing
institutionalized processes and practices, ‘when political actors, liberating
themselves from oppressive rule, suddenly find themselves immersed in a
new kind of politics . . . ’1 This new kind of authentic politics consist of
persuasive speech among equals about public matters, deliberation that
renders one’s reflexive judgment about a shared state of affairs concerning
a public good, whose meaning is undetermined.2 Political action, in this
sense, includes debate concerning the purposes and meanings that bind
the political community; it thus discloses political actors’ opinions over the
kind of community they see themselves as part of or as desirable. In this
sense, action is a re-articulation or augmentation of the constitution,
understood as a shared political way of life. Political action, for Arendt,
thus includes both revolution and the subsequent regular exchange of
opinions that keeps the public space alive.

© The Author(s) 2017 15

T. Tchir, Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Political Action,
International Political Theory, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53438-1_2
16 T. TCHIR

Central to Arendt’s account of political freedom as non-sovereign

action is the idea that action discloses ‘who’ the actor is, while it discloses
the ‘world’ that contextualizes action. Arendt posits the individuated
actor, not as a sovereign and self-transparent subject whose action
expresses an authentic individual essence, but as a decentered and ecstatic
‘who’ that, in plurality with others, reveals meaningful dimensions of the
shared world and of one’s specific current and historical situation. This
disclosure is witnessed, retrospectively judged, and narratively reified by
diversely situated spectators. Because action occurs in the context of
plurality, where people with often very different perspectives on the
world act at the same time, either together or at cross-purposes, actors
can never be certain about the consequences or meanings of their actions
or of ‘who’ they disclose, never control the results, like a master artist,
standing sovereign over their finished work.
At the outset of this chapter, I present Arendt’s concept of freedom
experienced through political action, through an engagement with her
analysis of an ancient set of metaphors comparing politics to art. By
contrasting the features of the political metaphors of productive art and
performance art, I elucidate the main features of Arendt’s theory of agent-
and world-disclosive political action, as well as her related critique of
sovereignty.

SOVEREIGNTY AND THE ART OF MAKING

While both productive and performance art have long served as metaphors
for politics, Arendt argues that the tradition of Western thought generally
favors the poiesis model of productive art and universalizes its instrumental
logic, techne. The experience of poiesis is fundamental to the conceptual
beginnings of the Western philosophical tradition, particularly through
Plato’s drawing of examples from the field of ‘making.’ Arendt posits that
the result of the Platonic analogy between politics and making, as well as
the tradition of political thought that it shapes right up until Marx,
represents a concealment of the essence of politics, which she understands
to be the freedom of spontaneous action. There are several features of
productive art that are analogous to the Western philosophical tradition’s
understanding of politics, as read by Arendt.
Productive arts, generally speaking, begin with an ideal image of what
the final product is to look like, an imagined form that the artist refers to
throughout the work process. It is in relation to this model that the final
 ACTION’S DISCLOSURE OF THE ‘WHO’ AND THE ‘WORLD’ 17

product is made and subsequently judged. In Plato, Arendt sees the

philosopher’s escape from the contingent and uncertain realm of human
affairs—the realm of the cave—to the eternal, illuminating realm of eidos
(Ideas), then an application of these forms to the earthly realm of politics,
as measures and standards for behavior, and the basis for the sovereign rule
of communities. In the making of laws to govern human behavior accord-
ing to rationally set measures, the political craftsman produces tangible
results according to a recognizable telos (end).3 According to Arendt, the
Socratic school became frustrated with the unpredictability and irreversi-
bility of human action and political affairs, the dangers of human plurality,
and sought the stability of producing according to a pre-conceived ideal.
The desire to escape uncertainty lead to an identification of freedom with
sovereignty, a kind of self-rule, self-sufficiency, and self-mastery.
The classical image of productive art implies a singular artist, one who
maintains control over the creative process from beginning to end. This is
a characteristic of homo faber, the human being engaged in the activity of
work, and the instrumental rationality that guides it, creating objects of
use that become part of the world of things. ‘Homo faber is indeed a lord
and master, not only because he is the master or has set himself up as the
master of all nature but because he is master of himself and his doings.’4
Arendt writes that Plato separates human action into two moments:
archein (to begin) and prattein (to achieve). Ideally, for Plato, the one
who begins an act also controls the end or outcome, much like the master
productive artist.5 The ruler posits an end that the community ought to
embody or work to achieve and then the ruler commands the ruled to
carry out their sovereign command. Plato took this model of a ruling
element that commands subordinates from his account of artistic mastery
and the well-ordered household, then applied it to his image of the just
city and justly ordered human soul. He posited that some individuals, by
virtue of the strength of the rational element of their soul in commanding
its appetitive and spirited elements, were well suited to command others,
while the rest of the city was best suited to obey. In an argument that
would be foundational for the Western tradition, a purported insight into
the truth and a resulting mastery of the self justified the rule of others.
Plato thus established the concept of ‘rule’ as the central concept of
political life. Politics comes to be dominated by the relationship between
a sovereign will and those who obey and carry out its commands.
Arendt argues that the Western tradition has distorted freedom by
transposing it from its original place in politics to the inward domain of
18 T. TCHIR

the will, where it could become available to self-inspection. She holds that
with the Stoic, Epictetus, originally a slave, freedom is localized within the
inner domain of the will and conscience, so that one may feel that one is
free from external coercion, but without a concrete manifestation of this
freedom in the shared world. There is hope in the notion that one can
attain freedom through self-control, can master one’s self, without
depending on a world which may deny freedom. To achieve this form of
freedom, however, requires that humans not act in a realm beyond what is
under their own power.6 Epictetus’ free individual acts in a very limited,
interiorized space, cut off from the world that they cannot master. Later,
Arendt relates, St. Paul discovers a kind of freedom with no relation to
politics, one based on the will, and experienced in solitude.7 However, he
also experiences the impotence of the will to translate into the perfor-
mance of what one ought to do, what one judges to be good. According
to Arendt, St. Augustine introduced St. Paul’s notion of free will into the
history of Western philosophy. Augustine sees in the will a simultaneous,
countering ‘not-will,’ both velle and nolle. The will, in its duality, is both
powerful and impotent ‘as an organ of self-liberation. . . . ’8 In the willed
liberation from one’s worldly desires and intentions, the will only achieves
a paralysis of performative action and cannot generate real power.
Experienced first as impotence, the will turns into a power-thirsty will to
dominate.
According to Arendt, the philosophical equation of freedom with will-
ing manifests politically as an equation of freedom with sovereignty, and
requires the self to submit to a singular sovereign will. If freedom is under-
stood as sovereignty of the will, then to be free the will must be able to
command itself. The velle must win in the struggle with the nolle.
Overcoming the self’s own resistance implies an overcoming of both nature
and the world. The self is housed in a body that is subject to the necessities
of nature; it has natural desires and shortcomings that can render the will
impotent. The self is also situated in a world, with changing situations
resulting from the acts, cross-purposes, and wills of others. The will is
constantly frustrated and its thirst for power originally stems from the
experience of its own impotence. Because the essence of the will is to
command, freedom conceived as a free and sovereign will requires that
the will be independent of others and prevail against them.9 Arendt argues
that throughout the history of Western political philosophy, the concept of
the will—as the power to command or to dictate action—and its correlative
notion of sovereign rule, have usurped the concept of non-sovereign, free
 ACTION’S DISCLOSURE OF THE ‘WHO’ AND THE ‘WORLD’ 19

and spontaneous action, as the centerpiece of political life. She sees a fatal
consequence in this equation of freedom with a sovereign will—that ‘we
almost automatically equate power with oppression or, at least, with rule
over others.’10
For Arendt, sovereign rule’s usurpation of free action occurs under
both classical monarchical sovereignty and modern popular sovereignty.
Joan Cocks distinguishes between these two forms of sovereign power.
Monarchical sovereign power, which receives its classical expression in the
fifteenth century from Jean Bodin, is an absolute commanding power
wielded by the prince. The sovereign rules in the image of God, models
its laws on God’s commandments, and recognizes nothing superior to
itself except for God.11 The prince makes and imposes the law on a
subordinate subject population without their consent. But even in mod-
ernity, argues Arendt, human beings who wish to be sovereign must
submit to will, be this the individual rational will with which the free
and moral subject determines their action, as in the Kantian tradition, or
the indivisible general will of a collective, as in the Rousseauian tradition.
According to Cocks, modern, popular sovereign power receives its clearest
expression in Rousseau’s Social Contract. This commanding power is held
collectively by a distinct people that makes and imposes the law on itself.
Rousseau argues that to be free in a political society, people must be equal
members of an artificial, collective body, where each is a citizen by sharing
in sovereign power, and each is a subject in putting themselves under the
laws of the state. Attaining freedom from monarchical power was synon-
ymous with the people wresting sovereign power for themselves and
controlling the conditions of their existence. This perspective has proven
so compelling that even today, sovereignty is widely seen as the essence of
freedom.12 But while popular sovereign power sought to free itself from
dominating higher authorities, by elevating a particular, privileged citi-
zenry above those determined to be alien, it introduced new forms of
domination.13 Cocks explains the will to exert sovereignty as a mediated
form of a desire to thrive in an environment not initially made by human
beings, but waiting for them. It is an impulse to obliterate, expel, or rule
other inhabitants of the world instead of being at their mercy, living with
them as equals, or allowing them to be as they are. Cocks argues that it is
only after secularization, the liberalization from divinely imposed author-
ity, that the subject can see itself as possessing sovereign freedom.14 But
the secular self’s enjoyment of sovereign freedom is illusory, as it can only
be gained through the permanent control of all worldly conditions.15
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Papurikko-
valakka. Ukkovaari
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Papurikko-valakka. Ukkovaari

Kaksi novellia

Author: Sándor Petőfi

Translator: Meri Sulju

Release date: September 5, 2023 [eBook #71573]

Language: Finnish

Original publication: Hämeenlinna: Arvi A. Karisto, 1909

Credits: Tuula Temonen

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAPURIKKO-

VALAKKA. UKKOVAARI ***
PAPURIKKO JA VALAKKA. UKKOVAARI

Kaksi novellia

Kirj.

ALEKSANTERI PETÖFI

Suomentanut

Meri Sulju

Kirjallisia pikkuhelmiä XIII.

Hämeenlinnassa, Arvi A. Karisto, 1909.

SISÄLTÖ:

I. Aleksanteri Petöfi.
II. Papurikko ja valakka.
III. Ukkovaari.
 Aleksanteri Petöfi.

Aleksanteri Petöfi (unkaril. kirjotustavan mukaan Petöfi Sandor),

Unkarin suurin ja kansallisin runoilija, syntyi Ris-Rörössä lähellä
Pestiä, jouluk. 31 pnä 1823. Riitaannuttuaan isänsä kanssa,
keskeytti hän 1840 opintonsa ja lähti maailman kylille. Ensin rupesi
hän sotilaaksi, mutta heikkoutensa tähden pääsi vapaaksi ja alotti
kiertolaiselämänsä, kuleksi ympäri Unkaria jalkaisin, usein ilman
penniäkään taskussa, antautui palavalla innolla milloin mihinkin
teatteriseurueeseen, mutta aina ilman menestystä, opiskeli ja
lueskenteli väliin, kierteli taas, teki puhtaaksikirjotusta, käänteli
englannin ja ranskan kielistä ja alkoi julaista lehdissä runojaankin,
joilla heti saavutti suurta suosiota. Seikkailujensa jälkeen saapui hän
v. 1843 Pestiin jalkaisin, sauva kädessä ja runojen käsikirjotuksia
povessa.

Pestissä otettiin hänet suosiollisesti vastaan, hänen runojaan

painettiin ja hän sai aputoimittajan paikan eräässä muotilehdessä,
jossa työskenteli vuosikauden. Mutta kansa ihastui hänen runoihinsa
päivä päivältä, niitä alettiin laulaa ympäri katuja ja kyliä. Ja kun hän
taasen lähti kiertämään ympäri maatansa, otettiin hänet vastaan
kaikkialla riemusaatossa, ja teattereissa, jossa hänet näyttelijänä oli
vihelletty alas, otettiin hänet runoilijana vastaan seisoaltaan
kunnioittaen ja kansallishymniä laulaen. Näillä matkoillaan oppi hän
tuntemaan Julia Szendreyn, erään tilanomistajan tyttären, ja pitkien
ottelujen jälkeen pääsivät nuoret naimisiin 1847.

Mutta kauvan ei perheonnea oltu madjaarien kansan laulajalle

suotu. Tuli myrskyvuosi 1848. Ensin hän julkaisi tulta iskeviä
vallankumouslauluja, mutta pian heitti kynän nurkkaan, läksi sotaan
ja nousi pian majuriksi. V. 1849 nähtiin hänet viime kerran eräässä
taistelussa. Tietenkin hän siellä kaatui ja haudattiin hänet muiden
mukana joukkohautaan. Hänen elämänsä oli kuin salaman välähdys,
hänestä ei oikein tietty mistä hän tuli, vielä vähemmin, mihin hän
katosi.

Mutta hänen runoissaan salaman välähdykset elävät ijät kaiket,

niissä elää luonnontuores kukkastuoksu, kotoisempi
kansanomaisuus kuin kenenkään muun unkarilaisen kanteleessa on
helkähdellyt. Niitä on jo ennen pienonen vihko suomeksikin
käännetty. Tässä tutustutetaan suomalaista lukijaa pariin hänen
parhaaseen kertomukseensa. Niistäkin kimmeltää jumalainen
neronkipinä, niissä pienimpiäkin olentoja kultaa todellisen runouden
päivänsäteily. Toivottavasti ennen pitkää saadaan suomeksi
enemmänkin hänen kirjallisia helmiään, sillä useimmat niistä ovat
käännetyt vieraammillekin kuin "veljeskansan" kielelle.

Papurikko ja valakka.

Voi merkittyä!

Yksin ja hyljättynä seisoo hän maailmassa, kuten kaupungin

reunalla hirsipuu, jota jokainen karttaa kammosta tai inhosta. —
Mieliimme on juurtunut, että surkastuneessa ruumiissa täytyy
asustaa turmeltuneen sielun. "Paetkaa häntä kuin ruttoa!"
huudamme. — —

Martti parka! Hänenkään ei käynyt paremmin.

 Hän oli kelpo poika, parempaa sydäntä ei ollut kellään; mutta
luonto oli rumentanut hänen kasvonsa ja ihmiset karttoivat häntä.

"Olkoon niin!" ajatteli hän. "Te minua vastaan — minä teitä

vastaan!"

Ja vastarinta alkoi…

Hänen isänsä oli suutarimestari Daniel Csigolya, joka nuoruutensa

päivinä oli ahertanut kokoon kohtalaisen varallisuuden.

Äkkiä pälkähti hänen päähänsä, kuinka kaunista olisikaan, jos hän

sepittäisi runojakin eikä ainoastaan kenkiä. Parasta näytti hänestä
olevan alottaa ottamalla tihkipäätä viinisiemaus, koska rypälemehu
oli paras runollisten mielialojen herättäjä; tällöin olivat hänestä
kaukana tunnonvaivat, että hän tuhlasi rahaa, päinvastoin hän sitä
vielä käärisi kokoon.

Daniel Csigolyan oli täytynyt olla sangen oppivainen ihminen,

koska hän juomataidossa pian pääsi mestariksi; ja se ei ole niinkään
helppoa, sen tiedän omasta kokemuksesta. Minun täytyy nimittäin
huomauttaa, että minäkin pyhitin näille opinnoille muutamia vuosia
siihen aikaan, jolloin suurta juopottelua vielä pidettiin hyveenä. Se
aika on mennyt — luojan kiitos — ja minä olen saavuttamani tiedot
unhottanut siinä määrin kuin en olisi niitä koskaan tiennytkään.

Poloiset ravintoloitsijat! Surkuttelen teitä sydämestäni, mutta yhtä

sydämestäni toivon, että hyvin monet seuraisivat esimerkkiäni.

Mutta kuten sanottu: herra Daniel Csigolya oli ahkera viinamäen

mies herran edessä. Ei kestänyt kauvan, kun hän jo joi vanhan
tuomarin ja kanttorin pöydän alle, ja nämä olivat, täällä kuten
kaikkialla, väkevimmät kapakkasankarit.

Ennenkuin vielä oli kaksi vuotta vierinyt, oli hänen omaisuutensa

hävitetty; talon osti raajarikko turkkuri, viinitarhan huusi
huutokaupassa kunnianarvoisa kirkkoherra. Vähitellen mentiin niin
pitkälle, että lestit ja muut työkalut vaelsivat nekin kapakkaan…

Rouva Csigolya oli säästäväinen, kelpo emäntä, joka ei

tietystikään iloinnut miehensä uudenlaatuisesta taloudenhoidosta.
Hän vuodatti katkeria kyyneleitä, kun hänen miehensä juopuneena
toikkaroi kotiin, ja valitti, kun sydämensä oli ylen täysi, väliin
naapurivaimoillekin hätäänsä. Miehensä edessä hän vaikeni, osaksi
sentähden, ettei hän oikein uskaltanut lausua nuhteita, osaksi, koska
hän ajatteli miehensä itsestään palaavan järkiinsä ja
velvollisuuksiensa täyttämiseen.

Hän odotti pitkän, pitkän aikaa — mutta turhaan!

Mutta vihdoin ei hän sentään voinut kärsiä sitä vaieten:

"Laupiaan Jumalan nimessä! Mies, mitä tästä on tuleva? Sinä juot

ja juot yhtä mittaa etkä enää koskaan työtä ajattelekaan."

Tämän puhuttelun aikana koetti Daniel pörhistää selälleen

viininraukaisemia silmäluomiaan, hän levitti hajalleen horjuvat
säärensä näyttääkseen mahtavammalta ja huusi sitten vakavalla
arvokkuudella:

"Hiljaa!"

"Rakas mies", jatkoi vaimo, "kun minä vihdoin puhun, niin tahdon
keventää sydämeni kaikesta siitä, mikä sitä rasittaa. Olen vaiennut
kyllin kauvan."

"Vaimo, älä poraa!"

"Mutta minun täytyy —"

"Vaikene!"

"Vaieta? Miksi?"

"Siksi, koska minä — koska — minä olen herra Daniel Csigolya."

"Ja minä olen rouva Sofie Csigolya."

"Vaimo! Älä napise taivasta vastaan. Pyhässä raamatussa seisoo

— mitä siellä seisookaan? — seisoo, että Jumala loi maailman
kuudessa päivässä, seitsemäntenä lepäsi hän. Sentähden asetu."

"En ennenkuin olen puhunut."

"Mitä? — Sinä tahdot puhua vielä? — Onko se totta vai leikkiä?"

"En ole nyt leikintekotuulella."

"No, koska se ei ole mitään leikkiä, tänne sitten partaveitsen kera,

että leikkaan kielesi pois."

"Ja vaikkapa. Minun täytyy puhua, koska — — —"

Julmistuneena karjui Daniel:

"Vaimo, nimesi on: vaiti!"

Samalla aikoi hän antaa vaimo raukalle iskun, joka ei kuitenkaan

sattunut paikalleen, niin että hän pyyhkäsi vaan päähineen pois.
Sitten heittäytyi hän tyydytettynä vuoteelle heti kohta kuorsaten kuin
raihnaisen sotilaan vanha piippu. Vaimo hiipi kyökkiin, valvoakseen
lieden ääressä itkien läpi yön.

Siten kuluivat päivät päästään. Mies oli juovuksissa, vaimo rukoili,

riiteli, torasi — lyhyesti, koetti kaikkensa johtaakseen hänet pois
harhapolultaan; mutta lopuksi kävi aina niin, että Daniel herra pakotti
julmistuneena vaimonsa olemaan vaiti. Vaimo älysi nyt kuinka kaikki
oli turhaa, hän ei itkenyt eikä valittanut enää, vaikeni, kun mies
palasi myöhään öisin juopuneena kotiin. Mutta mies oli sillä välin jo
tottunut iltaripitykseen, niin ettei hän voinut olla ilman sitä ja alkoi
rähistä, kun hänen vaimonsa ei virkannut sanaakaan.

Niin kuluivat päivät, niin katosivat yhä vähemmiksi myöskin tavarat

ja vihdoin astui autioon tupaan tuhlaavaisuuden nälkäinen, ryysyinen
lapsi — hätä! Se hiipi sisään kutsumattomana vieraana ja oli pian
talon valtiatar; ja tämä tapahtui aikaan, jolloin rouva Csigolya tunsi,
että pian tulisi kolmas huolehdittavaksi, siellä missä kahdenkin täytyi
kärsiä puutetta…

"Tuli ja leimaus!" murisi Csigolya, kun hän kuuli lähestyvästä

isänonnesta. "Tuli ja leimaus! — Nyt en voi antaa eukolle enää
kunnollisesti selkäänkään, sillä se voisi olla sikiöparalle pahaksi,
eikähän se voi mitään sille, että hänen äitinsä on sellainen — —
sellainen — —"

Hän etsi kauvan oikeaa sanaa, mutta ei löytänyt, vaikka paljon

ajattelemisen tähden alkoi aivan ruveta hänen päätään
huimaamaan.

— Silloin ajautui hänen mieleensä kysymys, miksi hän oikeastaan

antoi vaimolleen selkään.
 — Ja silloin hämärteli hänen mielessään tunnustus, että hän
oikeastaan oli itse syypää siihen. Hän päätti vastaisuudessa pysyä
kapakkasakista loitolla.

Ja hän piti sanansa, hän karttoi kapakkaa, mutta — ei kauvan…

Eräänä päivänä poltti jano jälleen kirveltävänä hänen kurkkuaan;

mielellään olisi hän tämän hehkun sammuttanut, mutta talossa ei
ollut enää mitään, jolla olisi saattanut suorittaa kustannukset.
Murheissaan tuijotti hän kohden taivasta, josta päivänterä
häikäisevänä säteili häntä vastaan.

"Ah", huusi hän, "voisinpa edes tuon auringon siepata taivaalta!

Heti tahtoisin sen myydä kilveksi parturi pahaselle, sillä hänen
entisensä onkin jo kurjan risainen. — Mitä tehdä? — Niin, mitä
tehdä? Saanhan kysyä, mutta kukapa minulle vastaisi! Minä
näännyn! — Sata dukaattia antaisin kunnollisesta viinikulauksesta tai
paremmin sanoen: en antaisi yhtä kulausta sadasta kultakolikosta.
— Jospa tietäisin suonissani virtaavan viiniä veren sijasta, avaisin ne
kahdestatoista kohden ja virkistäisin kurkkuani, viisi siitä, vaikka
silloin päättäisinkin päiväni. — — Ah, miksei minua ole luotu
viinitynnyriksi, tuollaiseksi kauniiksi, täpötäydeksi, sadan ämpärin
vetoiseksi viinitynnyriksi! Laupias vapahtaja, olisin jo tyytyväinen,
vaikkapa olisin edes kannunpullo; tai olisinpa vain tuollainen
savilautanenkaan, joka vetelehtii tynnyrin tapin alla! No, olisipa se
kylläkin alhainen asema! — Mutta yhdellä ehdolla: pian — heti
täytyisi sen tapahtua!"

Niin kuului herra Daniel Csigolyan surumielinen yksinpuhelu.

Hänen toiveensa muuttua viiniastiaksi, oli pettävä, hän pysyi sinä,
mikä oli, ainoastaan hänen janonsa tuli yhä tuntuvammaksi. — Hän
antoi katseensa, joka oli pelkkää toivoa ja epätoivoa, harhailla
yltympäri, eikö mistään keksisi mitään, mikä kelpaisi kapakassa
maksuksi tai pantiksi.

Ei mitään, ei kerrassaan mitään!

Huolellisesti penkoi hän kaikki taskunsa, vaikkakin hän tiesi, että

ne jo aikoja sitten olivat olleet vain tyhjää täytenään. Kentiesi olisi
sittenkin johonkin sopukkaan kätkeytynyt jokin kokoonrypistynyt
seteliraha.

Masentunein mielin antoi hän turhan etsinnän perästä käsiensä

vaipua.

Äkkiä juolahti hänen mieleensä aatos. Hän pani kätensä otsaansa

vasten ja napsutteli sormillaan.

"Nytpä tiedän! — Tänne lukko ovesta! Se on sitäpaitsi tarpeeton

siellä, missä ei ole mitään varastamista. — Daniel Csigolya, sinä olet
sentään kekseliäs mies!"

Hän etsi kirvestä toteuttaakseen aikomuksensa; hän unhotti aivan,

että tämä työkalu oli jo aikoja juotu. Hän etsi ja etsi, vieläpä
pöytälaatikostakin; vihdoin ryömi hän myös vuoteen alla. Siellä
pimeässä sinne tänne haparoidessaan, sattui hänen käteensä
pikkumytty, joka oli kätketty kaukaisempaan nurkkaan; hän veti sen
esille, katseli sitä kynttilänvalossa ja huudahti riemastuneena:

"Nyt en tarvitse lukkoa, se voi jäädä vastaiseksi, täksi päivää riittää

tämäkin! — Vaimoni juttelee naapurissa, voin sen siis häiritsemättä
viedä. Jos hän huomaa sen myöhemmin, niin kylläpähän hänestä
aina selvitään! — Muuten ei hän tarvitse tätä rääsyä enää. — — Ja
nyt: tule veli Dan!"
 Pahaksi onneksi astui, juuri kun hän tarttui säppiin, hänen
vaimonsa tupaan.

"Minne sen kerällä?" kysyi hän hämmästyneenä.

"Ulos, hiukan tuulettamaan, vaimoseni. Vuoteen alla on liian

kosteaa, sehän voisi siellä kokonaan mädätä."

"Tuulettamaan! — Niin! — Kenties! kapakkaan! — Siitä ei tule

mitään, heti vaan tänne se! Se ei saa mennä toisten tietä. Siinä
astuin minä alttarin ääreen, siinä tahdon myös astua Jumalan eteen,
se oli morsiuspukuni ja pitää olla myös kuolinverhonani. — Oi! etten
tiennyt sitä paremmin kätkeä, sillä enhän olisi voinut ajatellakaan,
että nuuskit kaikki, sinä onneton!"

"Jos tahdot nähdä minut onnellisena, niin laita tie vapaaksi."

"Mene, mikäs estää, mutta pukuni jää tänne."

"Kiitos kaunis!"

"Kokonaisena ei se lähde käsistäni!"

"Vaimo! Tiedät, että saan sinua käskeä, koska olen sinun herrasi.
Mutta minä en käske, minä pyydän: Anna minulle puku! Pyydän
sinulta, rakas, hyvä Sofie."

"En!"

"Vielä kerran pyydän sitä sinulta."

"En, en!"

"Ja viimeisen kerran pyydän minä".

 Vaimo ei antanut mitään vastausta, vaan tarttui yhä lujemmin
myttyyn, jonka hän oli temmannut mieheltään.

"Vihoviimeisen kerran, Sofie!"

"Turhaan!"

"Koska kaikki on turhaa: Tuoss' on!"

Samalla löi hän vaimoraukkaa vasten kasvoja, niin että tämä

kaatui takaperin. Mies sieppasi pudonneen mytyn ja kiiruhti
kapakkaan.

Silloinkos riemu alkoi!

Viini virtaili kuin olisi hän saanut sen ilmaiseksi. Herra Daniel
päätti, ettei hän ennen nouse pöydästä, ennenkuin on juonut koko
morsiusleningin hinnan suuhunsa.

Mies piti sanansa!

Kun taskut ja pullot olivat tyhjentyneet, toikkaroi hän laulaen kotia

kohden. Tiellä alkoi hän tanssia, mutta ryhtyi siihen pahimmalla
paikalla, suuren lammikon rannalla, jossa sikojen oli tapana rypeä.
Tanssinpyörteessä kadotti hän pian vaivalla pitämänsä tasapainon,
hän putosi syvänteeseen, ja kun yövahti hänet huomasi ja veti ylös,
oli hän jo lammikossa tukehtunut.

Vartija laahasi ruumiin asuntoon, missä vaimo oli tunti sitte antanut
elämän lapselle.

Pimeässä tuvassa oli nyt kolme: kuollut isä, pikku poika, jonka
elämä oli juuri alkanut ja äiti, joka horjui elämän ja kuoleman välillä…
 Leski hautautti miehensä ja kastatti lapsen. Hänet nimitettiin
Martiksi. Tästä menevä maksu papille oli aivan hyödytön menoerä,
sillä elämän keväässä eivät toiset lapset kuitenkaan nimittäneet
poikaa muuksi kuin "punaiseksi koiraksi", ja myöhemmin, kun hän
vanheni, tunnettiin hänet vain nimeltä "Papurikko". — Jokainen
lyönti, jonka hänen äitinsä ennen pojan syntymistä oli tämän isältä
saanut, oli merkittyinä hänen kasvoihinsa, joiden oikea puoli oli
hehkuvalla punalla peitetty.

"Mene sinne missä on — Papurikko!" —

"Kammoan häntä kuin — Papurikkoa!" —

"Välitän hänestä yhtä vähän kuin — Papurikosta!" —

"Suutelonko tahdot? — Suutele — Papurikkoa!" —

"Ja niin edelleen! Ja niin edelleen! — Papurikko!" —

Se oli puheenpartena kylässä, kaiken epämieluisen

ilmaisumuotona…

Monen ihmisen elämän täyttää tuska ja kurjuus. Mutta jokaisella

on kuitenkin aika, lapsuuden päivät, jotka ovat onnelliset, riemun
päivät, joiden muistoihin ajatus palaa niin mielellään kuin pääskyset
syksyn kolkkoina päivinä aurinkoiseen etelään.

Martilla ei ollut tätäkään aikaa; hänen lapsuuttaan ei mikään

valokohta kirkastanut enempää kuin myöhempiäkään päiviä. Pojat
eivät tahtoneet leikkiä hänen kanssaan, he antoivat hänen joko
seistä syrjässä tahi ajoivat pois; silloin oli hänen tapana juosta kotiin
itkien äidilleen välittääkseen, kuinka hän oli kaikkien tiellä. Ja äiti
puristi hänet sydäntään vasten ja itki hänen kerallaan…
 Kouluvuosina oli vielä tuskaisempaa.

Kukaan ei tahtonut ottaa "punaista koiraa" naapurikseen ja kun

opettaja hänelle vihdoin määräsi paikan, kiusasivat ja pilkkasivat
pojat häntä niin, että hän sen mielellään jätti; hän sai paikkansa
viimeisimmässä penkissä ja etäisimmässä nurkassa. Kun joku
häiritsi opetuksen rauhaa jutellen tahi vinkasten ja opettaja vihaisena
etsi syyllistä, niin osotettiin Marttia aina yksimielisesti pahantekijäksi;
se oli aika riemu, kun hän sitten viattomana kärsi kipeän kurituksen,
joka häntä kuitenkin vähemmän piinasi kuin selkäsaunat ja
herjaukset, joita hän sai tovereiltaan…

Miehensä kuoleman jälkeen vetäytyi rouva Csigolya omaisuutensa

vähäpätöisten jäännösten kanssa veljensä, kylänsepän luo, joka oli
vanhapoika; ystävällisesti otti hän vastaan nuoremman sisarensa ja
tämän pojan. — Kukaan ei tiennyt, miksi hyvinvoipa mestariseppä oli
jäänyt naimattomaksi; juorukellot tosin kertoivat, ettei kukaan tyttö
tahtonut ottaa häntä, mutta se oli vaan tyhjää puhetta, sillä ei ollut
ainoatakaan todistusta siitä, milloin hän olisi oikeastaan koettanut
kosia…

*****

Martti oli kahdentoista vanha, kun hänen enonsa sanoi hänen

äidilleen: "Sisar Sofia, kuinka pojan tulee nyt käymään? Tuleeko
hänestä renki vai ajuri?"

"Sitä en voi sanoa", vastasi rouva. "Hänen isänsä oli

käsityöläinen" samalla huokasi hän — "voisi kai hänestäkin se tulla."

"Sitä minäkin luulen ja siksi tahdoinkin asiasta puhella kanssasi.

Olisi kai parhainta, että opettaisin hänelle ammattini; kun
myöhemmin erkanen työstä tahi kun kuolen, voi hän ottaa pajan
haltuunsa. Poika parka! En rakasta häntä liioin, mutta säälin häntä ja
siksi tahdon hankkia hänelle toimeentulon, ettei hän olisi
tulevaisuudessa määrätty ihmisten armoille, sillä siinä tapauksessa
täytyisi hänen kuolla nälkään. Muuten onkin hän työhön sopiva,
ponteva ja voimakas kuin Herkules. Ja jos häneltä joskus puuttuu
hiiliä, tarvitsee hänen vaan asettaa rauta poskelleen, niin se tulee
hehkuvaksi. Hahaha!" —

"Hannu", sanoi rouva alakuloisena, "miksi teet sinäkin pilkkaa

raukasta. Eikö siinä ole kylliksi, että hän on koko kylän
pilkkatauluna!"

"No, no! Pieni pila ei lyönyt läpeä pääkoppaan!"

Mestari Hannukin kuului niihin, jotka hyväntekeväisyydestään

mielellään kantavat pienen koron, joka vähentää lahjan arvoa…

Seuraavana päivänä erkani Martti koulusta, mikä oli hänestä

mieluista. Kirjojen sijaan otti hän vasaran käteensä, sillä mitäpä
hyödyttikään turha päänvaiva. Eihän hänestä olisi kumminkaan tullut
pappia, vaikkapa olisikin istunut kirjojen ääressä päivät päästään.

Nyt vasta huomasi hän, mikä voima piili hänen jäsenissään.

"Hei! Olisinpa tiennyt ennemmin, kuinka vahva olen", puheli hän

itsekseen, "niin olisin hankkinut jo aikoja rauhan itselleni!" Ja
vihaisena löi hän rautaa kuin olisi se ollut hänen tuskiinsa syypää…

Kylän lapset rakastivat pajoja! Tuntikausia vetelehtivät he siellä,

ilokseen kuunnellen palkeen pauhinaa ja vasaran kalsketta ja
katsellen hehkuvaa rautaa, jonka kipenet joka lyönnillä täyttivät
ilman, ikäänkuin metalli olisi suuttunut kovan painon tähden. —
Mestari Hannun pajalle eivät pojat tulleet ainoastaan uteliaisuudesta,
mutta melkein yksinomaan pilkatakseen ja haukkuakseen Marttia. —

"Pojat, katsokaas, kuinka musta ja likainen hän on; punaisesta

koirasta on tullut musta piru!" huusi joku joukosta.

"Nyt on hän kauniimpi kuin ennen!" pilkkasi toinen.

"Mutta noki ei peitä hyvin. Mustan alta paistaa punainen

irvinaama!"

"Menkää tiehenne, tai viivyttelijä voi katua!" huusi Martti.

Mutta pojat nauroivat ja menivät ilkeydessään yhä pitemmälle,

kunnes Martti kadotti kärsivällisyytensä. Kädessään kanki, jota hän
Juuri takoi, syöksyi hän vintiöiden joukkoon ja alkoi huimia, jotta he
epäilemättä olisivat menneet mäsäksi, jolleivät olisi olleet
lujempitekoisia kuin muutaman pojan jalka, jonka hän löi poikki; hän
liikkaa vielä tänäkin päivänä…

Pitkiin aikoihin ei kukaan uskaltanut lähestyä pajaa, jokainen

pelkäsi hänen tanakoita jäseniään; kuukauden perästä oli löylytys
kuitenkin unohtunut ja pilkkasanat satelivat taas.

Martti kiskotti särkynyttä vaununreunaa, kun lurjukset taas

saapuivat ja räkyttivät pahemmin kuin koskaan.

"Hiljaa!" tiuskasi hän huimapäille.

Ivanauru oli vastaus! — Yhä karvaammiksi kävivät pistopuheet,

kunnes Martti, riehuen raivoissaan, heitti hehkuvan raudan erään
pojan kasvoihin. Kauhistuneena hajaantui poikasakki.
 "Mene!" huusi Martti, "mene, kanna sinäkin Jumalanmerkkiäsi! —
Ja jos eksyt, löydetään sinut kyllä polttomerkistäsi!"…

Tämä tapaus saattoi Martille paljon pahaa, mutta myöskin hyvää,

sillä yksikään pojista ei uskaltanut häntä enää pilkata…

Kuusi vuotta kului; jokainen karttoi Marttia ja hän jokaista!

Työpäivinä oli hän työssään ja juhlahetkinä sekä lepopäivinä pysyi

hän kotona. Ainoastaan sunnuntaisin meni hän kirkkoon, kumminkin
siihen aikaan, jolloin kaikki kyläläiset olivat jo menneet sisään; hän
asettui pimeään nurkkaan, oven viereen, ja kun pappi oli lausunut
aamenen, kiiruhti hän ulos ja oli jo kotona, kun toiset vasta lähtivät
kirkosta. Iltapäivin, kun oppipojat huvittelivat kirkkoniityllä pallosilla
tai muilla leikeillä, istui hän äitinsä luona tupasessa ja luki hänelle
raamattua. Tämä lukeminen ei tosin häntä suuresti huvittanut, mutta
hän kärsi mielellään ikävääkin, kun siten voi hankkia äidilleen iloa,
hänelle, joka häntä niin hellästi rakasti, ja oli ainoa kaikkien
joukossa, joka ei koskaan ollut lausunut hänelle pahaa sanaa…

Myöskin Martin kuusi oppivuotta kuluivat, hän suoritti

opinnäytteensä ja — oli kisälli!

Tärkeä käännekohta käsityöläiselämässä!

Suurempi on oppilaan riemu, suurempi hänen ylpeytensä sälliksi

päästessään kuin sällin, suoritettuaan mestarinäytteensä ja
päästyään mestariksi. Martti Csigolyakin tunsi tätä onnea. "Nyt on
minusta kumminkin tullut toinen mies", ajatteli hän. "En ole enää
poika, vaan nuorukainen, en renki, vaan vapaa kisälli. Kun nyt
saavun ihmisten luo, ei kai kukaan uskalla tehdä sitä, mitä he ovat
tehneet hyljätylle, avuttomalle pojalle. Niin — tuskinpa he tuota