Aredt La Sombra de Toqueville

In Tocqueville's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Liberal Republicanism Author(s): Margie Lloyd Source: The Review of Politics, Vol.
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In Tocqueville's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Liberal Republicanism

Margie Lloyd
An unfortunate consequence of viewing Arendt's thought in terms of a Hellenic-Nietzschean continuum is to raise serious questions about the enduring significance of Arendt's work on totalitarianism and its opposite: political and personal freedom. What is missing from the dominant scholarship is an appreciation of Arendt's acknowledged debt to Tocqueville; there is considerable suspicion that their differences are more important than their similarities. But Arendt and Tocqueville agree that the central political problem of modernity is despotism. Parts one and two challenge the view that Tocqueville is only concerned with soft despotism, whereas Arendt addresses the issue of harsh despotism which she subsequently abandoned. This article also restores Arendt's appreciation for Tocqueville's call for a new science of politics to overcome the problem of modernity. Part three shows their reliance on the "artof associating together" to preserve freedom in an age dominated by isolated and lonely individuals.
Recent commentaries on Hannah Arendt's political theory present two distinguishable modes of thought. One emphasizes the Hellenic influence on Arendt, and the other notes a Nietzschean cast to her work.' The former, and now orthodox,
1. JiirgenHabermas,"HannahArendt'sCommunicationsConcept of Power," Social Research44 (Spring 1977): 1-24, has generated the most attention in the literature concerning the influence of the ancients on Arendt. See also Mary and Political Dietz, "Hannah Arendt and Politics," in Feminist Interpretations Lunden Carole ed. and Pateman Shanley (University Park, PA: Theory, Mary Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991):232-52;Peter Fuss, "HannahArendt's Conception of Political Community," in Melvyn A. Hill, HannahArendt: The Recoveryof the Public World(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979). By contrast, Evil (Totowa, NJ:Rowman and George Kateb,HannahArendt:Politics,Conscience, Allenheld, 1983), locates Arendt within a Nietzschean framework. See also Noel ed. A. PoliticalPhilosophers, O'Sullivan in "Hellenic Nostalgia," in Contemporary de Crespigny and K. Minogue (London: Methuen, 1976), pp. 228-51; Wayne Allen, "Hannah Arendt: Existential Phenomenology and Political Freedom," Philosophyand Social Criticism9 (1982): 171-90, and "HomoAristocus:Hannah Arendt's Elites," IdealisticStudies13 (September 1983). Similarly, Judith Shklar's
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THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
view emphasizesArendt'scommitment to the consensusaspects of communalliving found in ancient thought, while the latter focuses on the individualexpressionof the agonalspiritseen in the emergingpostmodernliterature. True,a small group of authors recognize that Arendt may have attemptedto secure "a middle groundsomewherebetweenthe lofty ambitionsof Weston the one hand, and the prospectof a complete ern rationalism, unleavened skepticismon the other."2 Nevertheless,this view Arendt as a Nietzschean because of her alultimatelyportrays the to secure middle ground. leged inability An unfortunate consequenceof viewing Arendt'sthoughtin terms of the Hellenic-Nietzscheandivide is to raise serious questions about the enduringsignificanceof Arendt'swork on and its opposite:politicaland personalfreedom.3 totalitarianism, derive theirinitialsupportfrom TheHuman Bothinterpretations
main argument is that TheOriginsis the work of an agonal Jew, written within a Nietzschean framework. See her article, "Hannah Arendt as Pariah," Partisan Review50 (1983):64-77. 2. Peter J. Steinberger, "Hannah Arendt on Judgment," American Journalof Political Science34 (August 1990): 803-821. The citation is found on pp. 818-19. See also Patricia Springborg, "Hannah Arendt and the Classical Republican ed. Gisela T. Kaplan and Tradition"in HannahArendt:Thinking, Freedom, Judging, Clive S. Kessler (Wellington:Allen and Unwin, 1989),pp. 9-17;Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, "ExistentialismPoliticized: Arendt's Debt to Jaspers," Reviewof Politics53 (1991):435-68, have argued that Arendt resolved this tension late in life by abandoning ancient republicanism in favor of German-inspired existentialism. Jennifer Ring, "The Pariah as Hero: Hannah Arendt's Political Actor," PoliticalTheory19 (August 1991):433-52, also attempts to find a middle ground between the two alternatives but ends up with a heroine who picks and chooses when to participate. Dana R. Villa, "Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, 20 (May Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of Political Action," PoliticalTheory 1992):274-308,pursues the possibility of a middle ground. Villa's articlegenerated a critical response from Bonnie Honig in PoliticalTheory21 (August 1993): 52833. Her "Politics of Agonism" does nothing to turn us away from the ArendtNietzsche relationship; on p. 529 she states that Arendt's "debt to Nietzsche is more complicated than Villa allows." 3. Margaret Canovan makes this same point in her latest book, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretationof Her Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). I agree with Canovan that a discussion of totalitarianism runs throughout Arendt's work and is not located entirely in her early writing. The careful reader can draw the same conclusions without resorting to unpublished manuscripts.
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Condition,4written after The Origins,5 and arguably her most important contribution to political theory. Thus, certain commentators consider her work on totalitarianism to be an "early" phase in Arendt's development to which she never returned. Arendt herself, perhaps inadvertently, encourages this conclusion by making only one reference to hard-core totalitarianismin TheHumanCondition, and when she later admits, in in Eichmann Jerusalem,6 that she has abandoned the concept of "radical"evil in favor of "banal" evil. Nevertheless, I argue the that was very much present in soft despotism found in Eichmann her work during the late 1940s, forms the subtext of The Origins and is presupposed in her critique of "Work"and "Labor"in The Human Condition. Regrettably, this notion that Arendt's study of modern despotism is insignificant is reinforced by those scholars who have taken her work seriously. At the core of the criticism is the claim that her work is tinged with totalitarianismitself. I disagree with those who argue that she fails to distinguish between liberalism and totalitarianism, some-like N. K. O'Sullivan7and Stephen J. Whitfield8-because she has contempt for privacy, others-like Richard H. King9 and Shiraz Dossa10-because she
4. Arendt, TheHumanCondition (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1958, cited as HC). 5. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1955, cited as OT). 6. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York:Viking Press, 1963, cited as EJ). 7. N. K. O'Sullivan, "Politics, Totalitarianism and Freedom: The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt," PoliticalStudies21 (1973): 183-98. He argues that "theliberalor negative concept of freedom never receives adequate consideration" in Arendt's work. See p. 187. 8. Stephen J. Whitfield, Into the Dark:Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism (Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1980).He claims Arendt was "indifferent to the protection of privacy." See p. 148. 9. Richard H. King, "Endings and Beginnings: Politics in Arendt's Early Thought," Political Theory12 (May 1984): 235-51. According to King, Arendt's later discovery of the "republican tradition...of civic humanism" becomes the solution to her earlier rejectionof liberalism and totalitarianism. 10. Dossa states that "Arendt'spolitical theory is a sustained attack...on the liberal mind and its habits: her ideals of the public realm and the public self (citizen) explicitly challenge the liberalcelebrationof private interests and private lives." See "Hannah Arendt's Political Theory: Ethics and Enemies," History of Ideas13 (1991):385-98. European
34
rejectsboth in favor of a republican tradition of action, or because like Eric Voegelin,11she simply muddles the distinction between liberalism and totalitarianism.12 As Leroy A. Cooper has noted, however, Arendt herself argues that there are limits to the happiness which can be found in the public realm.13Far from having a "contempt for privacy," Arendt defends the need for a guaranteed private space in the world, the protection of private property. Her actual criticism focuses on those "modem advocates of private property...who unanimously understand it as privately owned wealth and nothing else." They who isolate themselves from the public world have "little cause to appeal to a tradition according to which there could be no free public realm without a proper establishment and protection of privacy."14 Thus, "nothing proves easier to destroy than the privacy and private morality of people who This is thought of nothing but safeguarding their private lives."15 in fact a critique of how easy it is to destroy the "privacy and private morality" of people who are philistine or bourgeois: an attack on narrow bourgeois life rather than an attack on the right to privacy as such or liberalism. A major problem with these criticisms is that they fail to take Arendt seriously when she argues that "liberals are clearly not
11. Eric Voegelin, Review of TheOriginsof Totalitarianism, Reviewof Politics 15 (1953): 68-76. Voegelin accuses her of a fundamental contradiction: she recognizes that totalitarianismis the result of the ascendancy of agnosticism but does nothing to restore any metaphysical foundation for action. 12. She disagrees with Voegelin that the answer lies in a return to religion and faith; "it will be hardly consoling to cling to an unchangeable nature of man and conclude that either man himself is being destroyed or that freedom does not belong to man's essential capabilities." Rather, she says, "the success of totalitarianismis identical with a much more radical liquidation of freedom as a political and as a human reality than anything we have ever witnessed before." See "Rejoinder to Eric Voegelin's Review of The Origins of Totalitarianism," Reviewof Politics15 (1953):76-85. 13. Leroy A. Cooper, "Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy: An Interpretation,"Reviewof Politics 38 (1976): 145-76. See p. 155: "She speaks of public happiness as a part of complete happiness and asserts that the sphere of politics, 'its greatness notwithstanding, is limited-it does not encompass the whole of man's and the world's existence.'" Emphasis is Cooper's. He cites PastandFuture Arendt'sBetween (New York: VikingPress,1968,cited as BPF),p. 253. 14. HC, p. 66. 15. OT, p. 338.
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Nor is totalitarianism simply the fulfillment of totalitarians."16 liberalism. Arendt insists on the novelty of totalitarianism: total domination, isolated masses, lonely individuals, arbitrary bureaucracy, endless expansion, superfluous humans, absence of utilitarian and common sense values. The distinguishing feature of totalitarianism is both "obscuring of the public realm" and "proclaim[ing] the nonexistence of privacy."17Totalitarianism has as its aim the termination of "the autonomous existence of any activity whatsoever" and the elimination of "human spontaUnlike ancient tyranny, modern totalitarianneity in general."18 ism "bases itself on loneliness."19 What is missing from the contemporaryscholarship on Arendt is her articulation of the tension between the community and the individual in terms reminiscent of such early modern thinkers as None Montesquieu, Madison, Kant, and especially Tocqueville.20 of them are what Arendt derogatively refers to as professional philosophers or professional politicians; instead, they possess the She relies on them to support her gift of thinking politically.21 the in favor of "federal principle," the "greatest argument innovation" revolutionary by which constituted political bodies combine and enter into lasting alliances without losing their identity.22This principle divides and "mutually" checks power, provides multiple sources for the representation of a "multitude
16. Arendt, "Rejoinder," p. 80. 17. OT, p. 139. 18. OT, pp. 322, 405. See also BPF,p. 96. 19. OT, p. 475. 20. Her characterization of the victory of the household over the polis is expressed in Tocquevillean terms: the division between the public and private realms have been blurred because, today, "we see the body of people and political communities in the image of a family whose everyday affairs have to be taken care of by a gigantic, nation-wide administration of housekeeping" (HC,p.
28).
21. James Ceasar, "Alexis de Tocqueville on Political Science, Political Culture, and the Role of the Intellectual," AmericanPolitical ScienceReview 79 (September1985):656-72,shows Tocqueville'sdistrustof the role of intellectualism in politics: they encourage individuals to exchange the common sense they learn through participation for abstractutopian visions. 22. On Revolution(New York: Viking Press, 1963, cited as OR), p. 168. See also OR, pp. 265-66 where Arendt describes the council system as a "miniature federal body."
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of opinions," as well as varied opportunities for individuals to acquire "enlarged mentalities," in order to overcome isolation and apathy.23 Thus, they learn the art of "representative She also turns to them for an understanding of the thinking."24 "republican principle" where "power...resides in the people," politics is constituted by mutual promises, and where there is no mutual subjection.5 For Arendt, the Mayflower Compact, and the covenanting tradition associated with that experience, "contain in nuce both the republican principle...and the federal principle."26In this regard, it is Tocqueville, rather than Montesquieu, Madison, and Kant, who informs Arendt about the covenanting experience of such "provincial institutions" as townships, counties, and state governments.27Like Arendt, Tocqueville places great emphasis on the "point of departure" for understanding democracy in America. The "cradle" of America is the Mayflower Compact, from which "all the general principles on which modern constitutions rest" are to be found.28 Nevertheless, her appeal to Tocqueville's call for a new science of politics for a new age-the "art of associating together"29-has been ignored, dismissed, or simply mentioned in passing.30 Arendt, like Tocqueville, is a
23. HC, p. 202. See also Crisesof the Republic(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972, cited as CR),p. 230 where she praises the federal system for its "horizontal"direction of power. 24. HC, pp. 202-203, summarizes her debt to Montesquieu. See also OR,pp. 118, 181,266, 302 and BPF,pp. 152, 161. For her praise of Madison see OR,pp. 90, 150-54, 164, 225. Her reference to Kant's notion of "enlarged mentality" appears in numerous locations throughout her work. See especially BPF,pp. 220,241 and her Lectureson Kant's Political Philosophy(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 42-43. Her concept of "representativethinking"is perhaps most clearly expressed in BPF,p. 241. See also CR,p. 182. 25. OR, p. 171. 26. Ibid. 27. Democracy in America,trans. Henry Reeve and ed. Phillips Bradley (New York: Vintage Books, 1945, cited as DIA), volume 1, especially 61-101. See OR, pp. 113, 118, 166, and 310 for her reliance on Tocqueville's observation that the "municipal spirit" was alive and well in the 1830s. 28. DIA, I: 27-47. 29. CR,pp. 94-95. 30. MargaretCanovan states in ThePoliticalThoughtof HannahArendt(New York:Harcourt BraceJovanovich, Inc., 1974), p. 15, that as a "partisan of public freedom," Arendt is a "companion of men like de Tocqueville, Jefferson, and
I . ARENDT AND TOCQUEVIT
37
"liberal of a new kind;"31 one who rejects such liberal principles as individualistic materialism, inevitable progress, and unrestrained majority rule, but who endorses the right to privacy, freedom of speech and association, and a decentralized political system dedicated to the rule of law and political participation through associations. Both Tocqueville and Arendt agree that the central political problem of modernity is despotism. Despite their affection for the ancient world, they consider it gone; modern times require modern solutions. Nevertheless, there is the suspicion that Tocqueville could not have been a model for Arendt because he addressed the milder problem of soft despotism in America whereas Arendt focused on European totalitarian terror.32 But Tocqueville was not unaware of, nor uninterested in, the phenomenon of a harsh form of modern tyranny; he devoted the major part of his adult life to the study of the bloody rise and fall of monarchical government, republican institutions, and military dictatorships in France. To be sure, Tocqueville is well known for his claim in Democracythat modern tyranny will be milder than the ancient versions, but he held no punches when describing the inhumane
Machiavelli"; Judith Shklar ("Hannah Arendt as Pariah," p. 70) concedes that Arendt finds Montesquieu and Tocqueville appealing; George Kateb (Arendt: Politics, Consciousness, Evil, p. 59) remarks that "Tocqueville's insight is acknowledged as seminal"by Arendt.All threeimportantinsights go unexplored. In her latest book, Canovan reaffirms the comparison of Tocqueville and Arendt. Her investigation of Arendt's unpublished manuscripts reveals that her 1955 lecture notes from University of California, Berkeley, "contain a heavily emphasized quotation from J. P. Mayer's book on Tocqueville recording how he had himself read Plato, Machiavelli, Burke, etc. while trying to understand his own time: 'He felt a need to measure the wealth of his American observations against the whole Western heritage of political doctrine"' (Arendt, A Reinterpretation, p. 67). Ironically, Canovan falls into the same trap that she accuses others by ignoring her advice to follow Arendt's leads for interpreting her work. Canovan's restorationof TheOriginsignores the impact of Tocqueville's work on Arendt's thought. 31. This is how Tocqueville described himself in a letter to Stoffels dated 24 ed. Gustave de July 1836, Memoirs,Letters,and Remainsof Alexis de Tocqueville, Beaumont (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), 1: 381. For a discussion of "new as the work of an aristocrat readings" of Tocqueville which portray Democracy or, conversely, a communitarian rather than a new kind of liberal, see "Polity Forum: Alexis de Tocqueville," Polity 22 (Winter 1992):283-313. 32. Whitfield, Into the Dark,is a major proponent of this view.
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treatment of American slaves and Native Americans, almost as if he anticipated the twentieth-century brutal solution to the Jewish Question. Moreover, Arendt had an enduring interest in the impact which totalitarianism has on the ordinary person who is motivated by self-interest narrowly understood.33 Her examination of totalitarianismis not exclusively an in-depth study of the propaganda and terror of the totalitarian movement, or a description of "radicalevil" leaders. Her work was a commentary on the damage done to freedom when ordinary people equated freedom with either the possessive individualism of bourgeois thought, or exchanged freedom for the security provided by the welfare state. Like Tocqueville, Arendt argues that liberty must be anchored in a politicaltradition which values and protects both the private and the public realms. There is the further suspicion that their solutions to the problem of modern tyranny are fundamentally different.34To wit, Tocqueville emphasizes non-political "habits of the heart" such as traditional morality, religion, and family, whereas Arendt exclusively relies on a wholly secular political sphere. But this exaggerates the nonpolitical dimension of Tocqueville at the expense of the political solutions Tocquevilleproposed and Arendt accepted. As a result, this interpretation overlooks Tocqueville's call for a new science of politics for a new age. It also unnecessarily truncates Tocqueville's understanding of the spirit or mores of a people, to which Arendt is particularly indebted. According to Tocqueville, spirit or mores means not only "manners properly so-called-that is, to what might be termed the habitsof theheartbut to the various notions and opinions current among men and to the mass of those ideas which constitute their character of mind. I comprise under this term, therefore, the whole moral and intellectual condition of a people."35Arendt's moral vision is
33. Arendt, "Organized Guilt," in The Jew as Pariah:Jewish Identity and Politics in the ModernAge, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1978). Subsequent references to this particularessay will be cited as "OG";other references to the book itself will be cited as JP. 34. This is the conclusion reached by Suzanne D. Jacobittiin "Individualism and Political Community: Arendt and Tocqueville on the Current Debate in Liberalism,"Polity 23 (Summer 1991):585-604.Jacobittialone makes the effort to seriously compare Tocqueville and Arendt. 35. DIA, I: 310, italics in original.
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similarly vast and novel; it encompasses a defense of the pluralistic condition of human life itself which totalitarianism threatens to destroy. This pluralistic condition makes it possible for humans to found enduring institutions to overcome the apathy, the loneliness and darkness of the human heart. To this end, Arendt heavily emphasizes the art of association. She considered Tocqueville's few chapters which he devoted to the "'art of associating together'... [to be].. .still by far the best in the not very large literature on the subject." Particularly appealing to her is his "conclusion that 'nothing is...more deserving of our attention than the moral and intellectual associations in America."36Arendt considers the art of association to be the spirit of the American federal republic and it is from the concept of association that Arendt derives her notion of the moral character of agreements and promises.37
Tocqueville and Arendton HardDespotism

Arendt refers to the "no testament" aphorism of Rene Char and the "darkernight" parable of Franz Kafka in the preface of BetweenPast and Futureto show the predicament of the modem world: the breakdown of the tradition and the corresponding loss of authority and freedom with the arrival of mass society. It would be wrong, however, to infer, as Kateb does, that Arendt follows a Nietzschean understanding of the modern dilemma. She tells us that Tocqueville's remarks anticipate both Char and Kafka. She cites Tocqueville:
Although the revolution that is taking place in the social condition, the laws, the opinions, and the feelings of men is still very far from being terminated, yet its results already admit of no comparison with anything that the world has ever before witnessed. I go back from age to age up to the remotest antiquity, but I find no parallel to what is occurring before my eyes; as the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.3 36. CR, pp. 94-95, citing Tocqueville's remarks in DIA, I, chapter 12-on "Political Associations in the United States"-and II,book ii, chapter 5-"Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life." 37. CR,pp. 86, 93, 225. 38. BPF,p. 283. Arendt cites DIA, II, bk. 4, 349.
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THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
In an interview near the end of her career,Arendt admits that it is Tocqueville, rather than she alone or Kafka or Char, who discovered the novel phenomenon of dark times.
Thisbusiness thatthe traditionis brokenand the Ariadnethreadis lost. Well, that is not quite as new as I made it out to be. It was, after all, Tocquevillewho said that "the past has ceased to throw its light onto the future, and the mind of man wanders in darkness."This is the situation since the middle of the last century,and, seen from the viewpoint of Tocqueville,entirelytrue.39
Despite her reluctance to claim that one form of government is better than another, it is clear that regimes which protect both individual liberty and political freedom are better than those which do not. Arendt portrays totalitarianism as an absolutely invalid form of government, precisely because its authoritative principle eliminates human plurality and therefore freedom. In terms reminiscent of Tocqueville, she argues that systems of "total domination" strive "to organize the infinite plurality and differentiation of human beings as if all of humanity were just one individual."40Totalitarianism entails "the total elimination of spontaneity itself, that is, of the most general and most It is the twentiethelementary manifestation of human freedom."41 century consequence of a world which has lost the capacity to think and act politically within a space guided by rapportsor lawfulness; it is distinguished by the principle that "everything is possible," in contrast to the liberal principle of "humanity"which acts as a restraint on conduct.42 Looking back on her earlier work, Arendt comments in BetweenPast and Futurethat
In my studies of totalitarianismI tried to show that the totalitarian phenomenon, with its striking anti-utilitariantraits and its strange disregard for factuality,is based in the last analysis on the conviction that everything is possible-and not just permitted,morally or otherwise, as was the case with early nihilism.43
39, Hill, Arendt:Recovery of thePublic World, p. 337.
40. OT,p. 438. 41. BPF, p. 96. See also OT,pp. 405,455,466. 43. BPF, p. 87.
42. OT,p. 427.
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What Arendt identifies as the novel principle of modem is possible-is also suggested by tyranny-everything "the maxim that is Tocqueville: everything permissible for the interests of society... [is]...an impious adage which seems to have been invented in an age of freedom to shelter all future tyrants."44 Similarly, she portrays the new tyranny in terms reminiscent of Tocqueville, who states that the new oppression "is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories." 45He describes how "a multitude of men, alike and equal" are without "a fatherland" and whose fate is in the hands of "an immense, protective power" which relieves them "from the trouble of thinking." For Tocqueville, ancient tyranny chained the body and failed to destroy the soul; the new phenomenon leaves the The challenge is to "raise body alone but "the soul is enslaved."46 the faculties of men, not to complete their prostration."47 Echoing Tocqueville, Arendt believes that the "most glaring difference" between old-fashioned tyranny and totalitarianism is that the former "left the whole inner life of the soul intact."48 Totalitarian is contrast, bureaucracy, by
efficient, intrud[ing] upon the private individual and his inner life with equal brutality. The result of this radical efficiency has been that the inner spontaneity of people under its rule was killed along with their social and political activities, so that the merely political sterility under the older bureaucracies was followed by total sterility under totalitarian rule.49
44. DIA, I: 316. 45. Ibid.,II:336. 46. Ibid.,I: 274. 47. Ibid.,II:93. 48. OT, p. 245. In this regard, Arendt and Tocqueville are guilty of making the same error:they claim that ancient tyranny left the soul alone. But as John L. Stanley, "IsTotalitarianisma New Phenomenon?Reflectionson Hannah Arendt's Reviewof Politics49 (1987): 177-207, has pointed out, Origins of Totalitarianism," what makes extreme democracy and extreme 'oligarchy similar to tyranny in Aristotle's classification-in other words what makes them all bad regimes-"is that they are despotikai." And by despotism, Aristotle means "the enslavement of the soul" (p. 203). Thus, to Stanley totalitarianismis actually an extreme form of tyranny anticipated by Aristotle, rather than a unique kind of cruelty and new form of government. 49. OT, p. 245.
42
Nor is this her only observation on the destruction of the soul as a consequence of the "all-is-possible"attitude of totalitarianism. She perceives that "totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology...totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizinghuman beings from within."50In the concentration camp "the psyche can be destroyed even without the destruction of the physical man; that indeed, psyche, character, and individuality...disintegrate."51It is significant that Arendt mentions the destruction of the soul in the concentration camp, a place usually reserved by critics to demonstrate that her totalitarianism is associated with physical
terror.52
Unlike Arendt, does Tocqueville limit himself to analyzing he does emphasize the fact soft despotism? True, in Democracy, of "I that under the new form tyranny, do not expect their leaders Democratic ages proto be tyrants, but rather schoolmasters."53 duce "absolute power" which is not "fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling."54He does not emphasize physical terror and concentration camps; nevertheless he does envision the possibility of a regimented community under the direction of an absolute government.
I have often asked myself what would happen if, amid the laxity of democratic customs, and as a consequence of the restless spirit of the 50. OT, p. 325. 51. OT,p. 441. See also p. 438: "Thecamps are meant not only to exterminate people and degrade human beings, but also serve the ghastly experiment of eliminating, under scientifically controlled conditions, spontaneity itself." 52. To Whitfield (Into the Dark), Tocqueville did not propose a model for totalitarianism but merely inspired conservative critiques of the welfare state. Instead, he suggests that Arendt follows the "fragmentary"and "evocative" lines of Nietzsche, yet he gives no evidence for this linkage. But in Democracy, Tocqueville may have been writing about America, but he was thinking about Europe. See the excellent article by Cushing Strout, "Tocqueville's Duality: Describing America and Thinking of Europe." AmericanQuarterly21 (Spring 1969): 87-99. In Arendt's case, one might also say that in OR, she describes America and thinks of Europe. 53. DIA, ed. J. P. Mayer (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 691. I believe this edition more accurately describes what both Tocqueville and Arendt have in mind than the Bradley edition which refers to "guardians" rather than "schoolmasters."See Bradley edition, II:335. 54. DIA, II: 148.
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43
army,a militarygovernmentwere ever to be establishedamong any of the nations of our times....The administrationwould assume someand the army some of the practicesof the thing of a militarycharacter, civil administration.The result would be a regular, clear, exact, and absolutesystem of government;the people would become the reflection of the army, and the communitybe regimentedlike a garrison.55 Moreover, Tocqueville did not ignore the issue of terror and violence. Writing to Louis de Kergorlay in May 1858 near the end of his life, Tocqueville observed the following: There is besides something special in this malady of the French RevolutionthatI feel without being able to describeit well or to analyze its causes. It is a virusof a new and unknown kind. Therewere violent revolutionsin theworld,but the immoderate, violent,radical,desperate, audacious,almostmad,and nonethelesspowerfuland effectivecharacter of these revolutionariesis without precedent, it seems to me, in the great social agitationsof past centuries. ... Independentof everything that is accounted for in the French Revolution, there is something unaccountedfor in its spirit and its acts. I sense where the unknown objectis, but try as I may, I cannotraise the veil thatcovers it. I feel this objectas if througha strangebody, preventingme fromeither touching it well or seeing it.56 He could well have chosen the word totalitarianism to describe the new and unknown virus.57 These were not simply the last thoughts of a fatigued observer. In January 1835, he informed Kergorlay that of the two choices now available: democratic government and "the government of one person ruling without any control...I do not want the latter. ... One cannot conceive what the limits of the tyranny would be; we have already seen fine specimens of this regime under Bonaparte."58 Moreover, Tocqueville did not want to believe that God had been pushing mankind to an equality which would end in a "despotism of Tiberius and Claudius."59 This is 55. See Appendix1, AA in DIA.The note to which he refersis found in volumeII,p. 387.
of California Press,1985),p. 373. Society (Berkeley: University 57. See footnote45 whereTocqueville soft despotismin a similar portrays fashion.
58. Ibid.,p. 94. 59. Ibid.
56. Roger Boesche, ed., Alexis de Tocqueville: SelectedLetterson Politics and
44
consistent with his conclusion to the main argument of volume "I am led to believe that they will soon be left one of Democracy: with no other alternative than democratic liberty or the tyranny He dramatically contrasts "the rule of democof the Caesars."60 "dominion of a single man."61 with the racy" Tocqueville's coverage of the "unprecedented atrocity" of the treatment of Southern slaves and the way Southerners treated the Indians certainlydemonstratesan awareness of unprecedented brutality in the modern world. He emphasizes that the kind of despotic rule over the southern slaves is a species of modern tyranny.
The legislation of the Southern states with regard to slaves presents at the present day such unparalleled atrocities as suffice to show that the laws of humanity have been totally perverted, and to betray the desperate position of the community in which that legislation has been promulgated....The only means by which the ancients maintained slavery were fetters and death; the Americans of the South of the Union have discovered more intellectual securities for the duration of their power. They have employed their despotism and their violence against the human mind....The ancients kept the bodies of their slaves in bondage, but placed no restraint upon the mind and no check upon education....But the Americans of the South...have forbidden them, under severe penalties, to be taught to read or write; and as they will not raise them to their own level, they sink them as nearly as possible to that of the brutes.62
Finally, in a letter to the LondonTimes,published in December 1851, written in an attempt to enlist the "grand jury of mankind in the cause of freedom," against the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon, Tocqueville informs his readers that not only the liberty of the press and the right to privacy have been violated, but also the fundamental integrity of democracy itself:
60. DIA, I: 341. 61. Ibid. 62. DIA, I: 395. For a further discussion on the differences between ancient and moder slavery, see DIA, I: 370-72; suffice it to note here that Tocqueville claims that modem slavery is based on race.RegardingTocqueville's observation on how Southeners mistreated American Indians, please see DIA, I: 348-69, where Tocqueville anticipated the complete genocide of Native Americans. According to Arendt, the racial theory of totalitarianism "denies the very possibility of a common humanity" (EJ,p. 268).
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The people is asked its opinion, but the first measure taken to obtain it is to establish military terrorism throughout the country, and to threaten with deprivation every public agent who does not approve in writing what has been done.63
In short, both Tocqueville and Arendt address the issue of hard despotism, although this term is usually associated solely with Arendt. Tocqueville and Arendt on Soft Despotism Did Arendt abandon hard despotism in her work on Eichmann? To be sure, Arendt emphasizes "the banality of evil" in Eichmann,rather than the "radical evil" found in The Origins; thoughtlessness rather than terroris the distinctive phenomenon of what happens to ordinary people operating under totalitarianism. It would be wrong, however, to follow Whitfield, Scholem, and perhaps Arendt herself, and suggest that she completely abandoned the concept of totalitarianism; thus rendering a comparison with Tocqueville moot or severely truncated. My claim is that Arendt's debt to Tocqueville includes both hard and soft despotism. I argue that in Eichmann,Arendt has "democratized" the concept of tyranny and, consequently, made totalitarianismmore susceptible to a Tocquevillean analysis of soft despotism. To Arendt, Eichmann is "nonreal"rather than diabolical, a person well-skilled in "officialese," unable "to think...from the standpoint of somebody else,"64yet successful because of his organizational talents. He bears a resemblance to Tocqueville's democratic man ready for the new tyranny: "each of them living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest."
63. Boesche, SelectedLetters,p. 276, emphasis added. See also his article, "The Prison: Tocqueville's Model for Despotism," WesternPoliticalQuarterly33 (December 1980):550-64, for Tocqueville's view that prisons represent the "most complete despotism." The isolation and powerlessness of the prisoners, and their concern with their own self-interest, enables the "masters" to direct the lives of the prisoners. Boesche, elsewhere, notes that while "Tocqueville may not have foreseen the murderous nature of twentieth-century fascism, some authors such as Hannah Arendt seem to agree that Tocqueville outlined the underlying prerequisites of totalitarianism."See his article, "WhyCould Tocqueville Predict So Well?" PoliticalTheory11 (January1983):79-104, especially p. 99. 64. EJ,p. 49.
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Mankind, for him, consists in his children, his "private friends," and his work. Their "will" enervated, these men "cannot...rise above the crowd," or prevent the government from treating the inhabitants as a "flock of timid and industrious animals."65 But the similarities between Tocqueville and Arendt are not I see a remarkable similarity between confined to his Democracy. Tocqueville's The Old Regime and Arendt's The Origins and Eichmann,all of which devote their attention to analyzing the collapse of authority in Europe. In The Old Regime,Tocqueville points out how despotism reduces human beings to a purely private life and makes us forget that freedom comes through public life.6 Both Tocqueville and Arendt distinguish between bourgeois individuals-who love freedom because it helps them achieve personal prosperity-and liberal republicans-who love freedom because it presents an understanding of the self in relation to the whole community. But, says Tocqueville, "the man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave."67Arendt agrees with Tocqueville that the spirit of 1789 was betrayed when the revolutionaries traded freedom for security under a centralized administration. Tocqueville notes that sufficient individuality was still present to launch a revolution in 1789. The French of the eighteenth century were not motivated by the "craving for material-well being which leads the way to servitude."68 But, conversely, the revolutionaries needed a strong centralized administration to carry out their egalitarian, social and economic revolution; consequently, autocratic government was preferred to a strong deliberative assembly. The hatred of inequality, which united the philosophers with the peasants, overpowered the love of freedom whose tradition had been eliminated. What Tocqueville saw in nineteenth-centuryFrance,Arendt saw in twentieth-century Germany.69
65. DIA, II:336, 337. 66. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regimeand the FrenchRevolution,trans. Stuart Gilbert (GardenCity, NY: Doubleday, 1955, noted as TOR),p. xiii. 67. TOR,p. 169. 68. Ibid.,p. 118. 69. In other words, it is inaccurate to limit the comparison of Arendt and work on terrorby Arendtwith an "American" Tocqueville to simply a "European" work on despotism by Tocqueville.
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Arendt claims that bourgeois thought originates with Thomas is a recipe for the bourgeois man. She Hobbes, whose Leviathan identifies this possessive individualist with the totalitarian man whose exemplar is Eichmann. It is important to note that Arendt does not criticize the principles of political liberalism which correspond to republicanism. Rather, she indicts Eichmann for supporting the Nazi regime beyond what he had to in terms of obeying orders. She argues, in effect, that Eichmann represents the corruption of modern liberalism:
What we have called the "bourgeois" is the modem man of the masses. ... He has driven the dichotomy of private and public functions, of family and occupation, so far that he can no longer find in his own person any connection between the two.70
Arendt interprets Hobbes's contract as one where bourgeois man-singular rather than men plural-surrenders his "political rights" to the state and "asks the state to relieve him of the burden of caring" about public policy.71Relieved of these burdens, man pursues unlimited accumulation of capital and power which ceases only in death. Most importantly, she does not view Hobbes as the father of social contract theory where men, born free and equal, voluntarily consent to join society; rather,Hobbes is the father of a class contract theory where the bourgeoisie exchange political participation with an obliging tyrant for property protection: a vertical contract based on fear of losing one's life and possessions.7 Arendt criticizes "this new human type" envisioned by Hobbes on liberal and republican grounds because it destroys "the liberty and autonomy of man" and the conception of man as "lawmaker and citizen."73Contrary to Hobbes's expectation, this bourgeois man is "deprived of his natural and human capacities" and is "degraded into a cog:"
70. "OG,"p. 234. 71. OT, pp. 145-46. She views Hobbes as an ideologist, or apologist for the bourgeois class in a fashion which is similar to the treatmentfound in Macpherson and Strauss. See C. B. Macpherson, ThePoliticalTheory of PossessiveIndividualism: Hobbesto Locke(Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1962), and Leo Strauss, NaturalRight and History (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1953). 72. She does not associate Locke or the covenanting tradition with Hobbes. 73. OT, pp. 143-44.
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specificallythat Nazism, in the traditionof Hobbes,attemptsto Thesignificant "changemaninto a beast."74 pointhereforArendt is that Hobbes'spoliticalphilosophysacrificesthe individualto the inevitablelaws of nature; bourgeoisprogressends in political in this tyranny.Again, regard,Arendt'scriticismparallelsher criticismof the inevitablelaws of totalitarianism. I contend that Arendt's twentieth-century example of Hobbes's bourgeois man is Adolf Eichmann,an isolated and lonely individualproducedby mass society.An examinationof in the controversy surrounding the publication of Eichmann is beyond the scope of the presentarticle.75 However, Jerusalem the exchange between Gershom Scholem and Arendt over Eichmann in Jerusalem is pertinentto my argument.76 Scholem of evil" thesis: disagreeswith her "banality
After reading your book I remain unconvinced by your thesis concerning the "banality of evil"- a thesis which, if your sub-title is to be believed, underlies your entire argument. This new thesis strikes me as a catchword: it does not impress me, certainly, as the product of profound analysis-an analysis such as you gave us so convincingly, in the service of a quite different, indeed contradictory thesis, in your book on totalitarianism. At that time you had not yet made your discovery, apparently, that evil is banal. Of that "radical evil," to which your then analysis bore such eloquent and erudite witness, nothing remains but this slogan.77
In her response,Arendtsays:"'Youarequiteright:I changedmy evil."' mind and do no longerspeakof 'radical

74. OT, p. 179. 75. There is considerable merit to Leon Botstein's reflections in his "TheJew as Pariah: Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy," DialecticalAnthropology8 (October 1983):47-73. He makes the provocative suggestion that EJbe read as a companion piece to OR. Botstein argues that her critique of the banality of evil points to "the political necessity for freedom, individuality, differentiation, decentralized authority, de-bureaucratization, truth telling and barriers to mob and mass politics" (pp. 64-65). According to Botstein, Arendt wanted Israel to be like America, with its commitment to liberal republican principles. I agree, but believe it is important to note that Arendt's concern with banality preceded her arrival in America. 76. "Eichmannin Jerusalem": Exchangeof Lettersbetween Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt (January1964), in JP, pp. 240-51. This citation occurs on p. 241. See Hinchman and Hinchman above for an existentialist interpretation of the Scholem-Arendt exchange. 77. JP, p. 245.
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It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never "radical," that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world preciselybecause it spreads like a fungus on the surface.It is "thought-defying," as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustratedbecause there is nothing. Thatis its "banality."78 But Arendt's 1963 notion of the banality of evil does not repudiate her teaching on The Origins nor does it mark a new direction in her thought which confirms her antagonism to liberalism. In her 1945 essay, she describes "totalitarian policy... [as one]...which has completely destroyed the neutral zone in which the daily life of human beings is ordinarily lived."79 The criminal nature of the Nazi regime was that they made "the existence of each individual in Germany depend either upon committing crimes or on complicity in crimes."80 Ordinary Germans became "cops in the mass-murder machine," a specifically "modern political phenomenon" which strains "the framework and categories of our political thought and action."81 Anticipating her later argument in Eichmann, Arendt reflects on the fact that we have been taught to treat evil as something committed by radically evil people who can be held responsible for their conduct because of their "consciousness of guilt." But, according to Arendt, Heinrich Himmleris not one of those intellectualsstemming from the dim No-Man's Land between the Bohemian and the Pimp, whose significance in the composition of the Nazi elite has been repeatedly stressed of late. He is neither a Bohemian like Goebbels, nor a sex nor a pervertedfanaticlike Hitler,nor an advencriminallike Streicher, turer like Goering. He is a "bourgeois"with all the outer aspect of who does not betray respectability,all the habits of a good paterfamilias his wife and anxiously seeks to secure a decent future for his children; and he has consciously built up his newest terrororganization,covering the whole country, on the assumption that most people are not 78.JP,pp. 250-51. 79. "OG," p. 228. 80. Ibid. to Voegelin's reviewof Seealsop. 232.Inherrejoinder 81. "OG," pp. 228-31. OT, she remarkedthat totalitarian policies "have exploded our traditional of our moraljudgment." See categoriesof politicalthought...andthe standard Arendt,"Rejoinder," p. 80.
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Bohemiansnor fanatics,nor adventurers,nor sex maniacs,nor sadists, but, first and foremostjob-holders,and good family-men.82
Here we see the concept of banality of evil in its embryonic form as early as 1945. True, The Origins emphasizes radical evil, but the concept of banal evil is present. In fact, Arendt uses the very same language and examples from her 1945 essay to show that Himmler et al. organized the mass man and not the mob man. Precisely because they were "first and foremost job holders and good family men," it was easy to destroy "the privacy and private morality of people who thought of nothing but safeguarding their private lives."83 In other words, Himmler's organization of terror was tailored for an "average German" like Adolf Eichmann, who preferred being a "bourgeois" to being a "citoyen." Germany was "particularly favorable" for the development of this condition where ordinary people would carry out the extermination of an entire race as if it were an occupation. "Hardly another country of Occidental culture was so little imbued with the classic virtues of civic behavior. In no other country did private life and private calculations play so great a role."4 To be sure, Eichmann was not a controversy for another eighteen years, but the foundation for the concept of banality in approaching "the crime of administrative mass murder"85 had already been laid. In Eichmann, Arendt portrayed Eichmann as a person who was bored and wanted a life in the world. He experienced an "extraordinary sense of elation" when he ordered that Jews be put to death. This braggart was unable "to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of someone else."6 In Tocquevillean language, Eichmann was motivated by selfinterest wrongly understood. In short, he is the archetypal modern
82. "OG,"pp. 231-32. 83. OT, p. 338. 84. "OG,"p. 233. 85. "OG,"p. 230. 86. El, p. 49, original italics. Arendt extols in The Origins, Dark Times,and Eichmann,the importance of "thinking"which can only take place if there is at least a partial withdrawal from the world and that withdrawal is protected from total external domination. A more complete account of Arendt's concept of thinking and action can be found in TheLifeof theMind. I refer the reader back to earlier arguments on representative thinking in the opening section of this article.
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man, more interested in pursuing "physical gratifications" than in participating in public affairs.87 Tocqueville's and Arendt's Solution to the Problem of Despotism: The "Art of Associating Together" While Tocqueville and Arendt agree on the problem of despotism, the question remains: do they agree on its solution? For example, Suzanne D. Jacobitti acknowledges that Arendt greatly admires Tocqueville's critiqueof "modem individualism," but "herresponses did not involve appeals to traditionalmorality, religion, and family."8 Jacobitti correctly sees Tocqueville and Arendt identifying the crisis of modernity with the spread of Cartesian doubt. The opinion of the majority becomes authoritative and atomistic individuals pursue private interests, resulting in either a soft or harsh despotism. Both Tocqueville and Arendt believe that there is a certain inevitability about the crises, yet both hold out the possibility for a new beginning and look to American's system of local government and voluntary associations as opportunities for securing freedom. Despite these briefly mentioned similarities, it is the differences between Tocqueville and Arendt which matter to Jacobitti: "Tocqueville emphasizes what he calls 'habits of the heart,' e.g. non-political habits and sentiments such as religion and enlightened selfinterest. Arendt looks almost exclusively to the political sphere, rejecting the use of religion and interest for political purposes."89 To religion and interest, Jacobitti adds Tocqueville's apparent reliance on a traditionalrole for women. Their individual freedom and happiness are sacrificed; married women have the responsibility of keeping up the mores of the country by their support, among other things, of traditional religion.
87. DIA,II:148-51.Tocquevilleand Arendtremind us that the "chiefbusiness" in life is that humans should "remain their own masters....Otherwise, they will become the slaves of an able and ambitious man" (p. 149). 88. Jacobitti, "Individualism and Political Community," p. 586. Jacobitti cites a letter from the Arendt papers, Libraryof Congress, Box 9, where Arendt acknowledges to Seymour Drescher "the 'great influence' of Tocqueville on her thought." See also Canovan cited above on Arendt's 1955 Berkeleylecture notes. 89. Ibid.,p. 592.
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I suggest that what joins Tocqueville and Arendt is more important: they are both liberals of a new kind, in that they defend both liberty and authority rather than advocate materialistic individualism and unbridled majority rule. Jacobitti to the contrary, they both recognize that traditional authority has disappeared. Jacobitti has only Arendt turning away from traditional authority and she makes this the great divide between Tocqueville and Arendt. Unlike Tocqueville, she says, the latter turned to a "uniquely political culture"free from "particularistic" religions or traditions and "as universalistic as the phenomenon of free politics."90 I think that Jacobitti overemphasizes Tocqueville's reliance on traditional morality, religion, and family. Jacobitti to the contrary, Tocqueville did not endorse the establishment of a "relatively homogeneous Christian belief."91He admired the multiplicity of religions in America because that meant each sect had been rendered compatible with the secular institutions.92 Tocqueville defended religion for political reasons: it nurtured the individual soul at a time when determinism and materialism prevailed.93True, unlike Arendt, he turned to religion to help overcome the problem of "the mind of man wandering in But the religion supported by Tocqueville does not obscurity."94 conform to traditional standards. As Catherine Zuckert reminds us, Tocqueville warned that Christianity must adapt or be destroyed.95 Accordingly, he was willing to endorse religions that teach the existence of metempsychosis. Tocqueville's treatment of the family may well seem traditional in the light of recent decades of change; but he portrayed American women as superior to European women because they had been taught to take care of themselves. To be sure, their lot was not an easy one, but according to Tocqueville, they freely chose this lot due to their being educated in the new principle of self-government. The same holds true for morality; he is willing to exchange
90. Ibid.,p. 597. 91. Ibid.,p. 602. 92. DIA, I: 310-18;II:21-29. 93. Ibid.,II: 142-56. 94. BPF,p. 283, citing Tocqueville. 95. CatherineZuckert,"Not By Preaching:Tocqueville on the Role of Religion in American Democracy," Reviewof Politics43 (1981):259-80.
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reliance on traditional virtue for the modern doctrine of rights and interests. Simple obedience is replaced by a species of selfgovernment; the traditional sacrifice of the individual to the community is replaced with the modern reconciliation of the individual and the community. In short, Tocqueville relies on a modern remedy for modern tyranny, an approach which Arendt finds attractive. Arendt gives Tocqueville credit and appeals to his insights at crucial stages of her treatment on totalitarianism and freedom. She relies on "Tocqueville's great discovery...of the motives for the violent hatred felt by the French masses for the aristocracy at the outbreak of the Revolution" to help her answer the question which she says defies common sense: How was it possible for the Nazis to make the Jewish Question the central issue of European The answer is that both the aristocratsand the Jews lost politics?96 their public status but retained their wealth. According to Arendt, Tocqueville is also "the first to wonder why 'the doctrine of necessity.. .is so attractiveto those who write history in democratic ages;"'97they focus on general historical trends rather than particular critical events. In addition, he realized that "there is of course a great appeal to the masses in 'absolutist systems which represent all the events of history as depending upon the great first causes linked by the chain of fatality, and which, as it were, He "again suppress men from the history of the human race.'"98 is quite right when he remarks that 'of all ideas and sentiments which prepared the Revolution, the notion of and the taste for public liberty strictly speaking have been the first ones to disappear."'99 Similarly, his "dictum '[i]n America men have the opinions and passions of democracy, in Europe we have still the passions and opinions of revolution,' has remained valid deep into our own century."'00 But as important as these observations are, nothing struck a deeper cord in Arendt than did Tocqueville's comments on "as96. OT, p. 4. 97. OR, p. 113. 98. OT, p. 345. 99. OR, pp. 132, 245. 100. Ibid.,p. 222. See also p. 260 on Arendt's admiration for Tocqueville's ability to predict.
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sociating together." Arendt claims that an association's "gift for action" rests on its ability and will "to unite 'into one channel the minds' (Tocqueville)."'10 effort of divergent "Associating together" is at the core of both Arendt's and Tocqueville's new science of politics. Her debt to Tocqueville is clear:
accountcould almostbe writtentoday:"Assoon as several Tocqueville's of the inhabitantsof the United States have taken up an opinion or feeling which they wish to promotein the world,"or have found some fault they wish to correct,"they look out for mutual assistance,and as soon as they have found one another out, they combine. Fromthat menbuta powerseenfromafar,whose moment, theyareno longerisolated actionsserve for an example and whose language is listened to."'02
Following Tocqueville's call for a new science of politics, Arendt attempts to provide a "new political principle" for the modern world,'03a principle anticipated in "Organized Guilt," affirmed in TheOrigins,and reaffirmed in Eichmann: to provide a new basis for authority "in which men retain their freedom."'04 The new political principle of freedom and responsibility combines judging and acting, and thinking what we are doing and doing what we are thinking. For Arendt, the doctrine of responsibility presumes the capacity to think and act, a capacity denied (as far as she is concerned) by Zeitgeist theories which deny that an alternative was possible to what actually happened. Because the human mind has ceased to function properly, the twentieth century has witnessed existentialism-"the escape from thought into action"-and the reversal from action into philosophy of history. The task is to restore a "genuine interest in political theory" last seen in the "despair"of Tocqueville and the "confusion" of Marx.105 The challenge is to establish this principle without an adherence to an absolute doctrine which "no longer counts," or which has been perverted to mean something else. Arendt presents absolute doctrines of either nature or history as part of the problem
101.CR,p. 98, Arendt's emphasis. 102.Ibid., p. 95, Arendt's emphasis. 103.OT,p. ix. 104.BPF, p. 106. 105.Ibid., pp. 76-77.See alsopp. 25 and 95.
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of the modern world.06 In fact, she claims that "absolute values" are delusions which modern society has abandoned.107 Throughout The Origins, Arendt recognizes "the tremendous intellectual change which took place" with the arrival of the Darwinian understanding of nature and history as movements of progress and necessity. She argues that Gobineau's racial theories, Spencer's survival of the fittest doctrine, and Marx'sclass theories are all derived from Darwin's "natural law of all courses of events."'08She also rejects these modern deterministic versions because she claims they undergird both Nazism and Stalinism.109 Yet she criticizes totalitarian regimes because they aim to "transform the nature of man.""0 "Human dignity," and "the essence of man" are in danger of being destroyed."' Nothing less than "human nature as such is at stake.""2In The Origins, she returns to the concept of "humanity" anticipated in "Organized Guilt," and would have us believe that "humanity"-modified by common sense-is free of the problems she associates with human nature and philosophies of history.
This new situation, in which "humanity" has in effect assumed the role formerly ascribed to nature or history, would mean in this context that the right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself.13
I suggest this hesitancy about human nature may be due in part to her reliance on Tocqueville who stressed the historical as opposed to the natural side of human institutions. Even if it is true-as a number of commentators have pointed out"4-that
106. OT,p. 345. 107. Ibid.,pp. 188-89. 108. Ibid.,p. 171. See also p. 151, where she cites Tocqueville's remark that Gobineau's racial doctrines "areprobably wrong and certainly pernicious." 109. Ibid.,p. 346. See Robert Mayer, "Hannah Arendt, National Socialism and the Projectof Foundation," Reviewof Politics53 (1991):469-87, for a critique of Arendt'sclaim that the laws of nature to which Hitlerappealed were Darwinian. Mayer's observation does not alter my argument. 110. OT, p. 347. See also pp. 268 and 458. 111. Ibid.,p. ix. 112. Ibid.,p. 179. 113. Ibid., p. 298. See also pp. 235, 243, 267, and 451 for her treatment of human nature. 114. See Stanley, "Is Totalitarianisma New Phenomenon?"
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Arendt cannot sustain her argument about the uniqueness of totalitarianism, it is important to note that both Arendt and Tocqueville argue that what makes modem tyranny unique is its attempt to destroy individual human dignity. There are times when Tocqueville is as ambiguous about the existence of natural standards as is Arendt. Despite his reliance on the principle of the sovereignty of the people working through associations, he considers it important that an individual can appeal "to the sovereignty of mankind" to restrain the behavior of the majority.15 Tocqueville insists that there are fundamental principles based in the "general reason and the universal conscience of
mankind."116 In this regard, "a nation may be considered as a jury which is empowered to represent society at large."117In other
words, the oppressed citizen can appeal to the nation, and if that fails, to "mankind" to preserve "liberty and the greatness of man."118 He even speaks about individuals having natural rights or privileges with "the most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his fellow creatures and of acting in common with
them. "119
Despite this appeal to the natural right of association, Tocqueville for the most part emphasizes the experience of association rather than the existence of natural standards as a defense of liberty. For example, he notes that the Americans relied on the experience of the English aristocracy in order to build a widespread network of intermediate and secondary powers between the central authority and the individual. Not only did the Americans inherit the experience, they keep the experience alive. It is through associations that the "reciprocal influence of men upon one another" renews "feelings and What opinions," as well as developing mutual understanding."120
115. DIA, I: 269. 116. Ibid.,II:248. See his chapteron "Honorin the United States"for a general discussion of the "permanentand universal interests of mankind" (pp. 242-55). 117. Ibid.,I: 269. 118. Ibid., II: 342, 345. The Mayer edition refers to "liberty and human dignity." See p. 699. 119. DIA, I: 203. 120. Ibid.,II: 117. The idea that in America individuals "are born equal" is based on an appeal to history and not to natural right. In France,humans became equal as a result of revolution, but lost liberty in the process (ibid.,p. 108).
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makes the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence attractive to Tocqueville and Arendt as solutions to the problem of despotism is not the appeal to God or the laws of nature, but the fact that people themselves covenanted with each other.12The Americans in 1620 created a "democracy more The American perfect than antiquity had dared to dream of."'12 Revolution spread the concept across the land. Tocqueville's major premise is this: we live in a new age and reliance on "old relations" have been "destroyed or modified" and new relations must be formed. He thought that the republics in America were so different from the ancient examples that he was "tempted to burn my books in order to apply none but novel ideas to so novel a condition of society."23 With these points Arendt is in complete agreement. Prominent among the new relations that Tocqueville and Arendt admire are the multiplicity of associations fostered by the federal principle of decentralization. Tocqueville observed that Americans have applied this "new science to the greatest number of purposes."124 Tocqueville's new science of politics and Arendt's appreciation of Tocqueville's contribution turn on the application of this new principle of association on behalf of human freedom in the Cartesianworld of doubt. Associations join together otherwise isolated individuals whose separateness provides the condition for either soft or hard despotism. The American experience demonstrates to both of them that "'if men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.'"125
121. Ibid.,I: 36; OT,p. 124;and BPF,pp. 246-47. For a contraryinterpretation, see Robert P. Kraynak, "Tocqueville's Constitution," AmericanPolitical Science Review 81 (December 1987): 1175-96. He claims that Tocqueville appeals to a higher law background as the ultimate foundation for his constitutionalism. My point is that Tocqueville's appeal, like Arendt's, is ambiguous. 122. DIA, I: 37. 123. Ibid.,p. 327. 124. Ibid.,II: 115. 125. Arendt herself carries Tocqueville's principle of association beyond Tocqueville. She identifies the "spirit"of American constitutional law as the long experience of covenanting and making mutual promises. See CR, p. 97. Rather than grounding the notion of observing and breaking agreements on the "fiction" of natural law, she claims that citizens obey the law because of "a 'consensus universalis'as Tocqueville called it" (ibid.,p. 88). On the other hand, she portrays
58
Both Arendt and Tocqueville believe that the problem of modernity is that the soul of isolated and lonely man is laid open "to an inordinate love of material gratification"126 and that individuals find "the discharge of political duties...to be a troublesome impediment which diverts them from their occupations and business."127 The result is the phenomenon of soft or harsh The central political question for both is "the cause of despotism. A new solution is required in an age freedom versus tyranny."128 which has lost its contact with the past. The "art of associating" provides the new foundation for authority and the defense of freedom.
the right to dissent and civil disobedience as "nothing but the latest form of voluntary association" (ibid.,p. 96). She agrees completely with Tocqueville that the art of associating together was "thepeculiar strengthof the American political system," and applies this art of association to protect "organized minorities" from the tyranny of the majority (ibid., p. 94). Put differently, she grounds the right to dissent in the covenanting tradition itself, one which she associates with Tocqueville, rather than an individualistic act of defiance derived from a higher law tradition. 126. DIA, II:23. 127. Ibid.,p. 149. 128. OR,p. 11. According to Arendt, "the raisond'etreof politics is freedom" (BPF,p. 146).

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In Tocqueville's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Liberal Republicanism Author(s): Margie Lloyd Source: The Review of Politics, Vol.

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