We Are Free to Change the World

1. Hannah Arendt's Enduring Relevance: Confronting Modern Political Rot

We are free to change the world and to start something new in it.

A timely resurgence. Hannah Arendt's work, particularly The Origins of Totalitarianism, saw a massive surge in popularity following the political shifts of the 21st century, resonating with readers facing a return of political absurdity, mendacity, and cynicism. Her analysis of how hate, fear, and political lies triumphed in the 20th century feels eerily relevant today, prompting a renewed search for understanding in her writings. While 20th-century totalitarianism hasn't fully returned, many of its underlying elements have crept back into political culture.

Diagnosing the rot. Arendt warned that the conditions and thinking that permitted totalitarian regimes could linger, adapting to new circumstances. Contemporary challenges like widespread cynicism, conspiracy theories, self-censorship, loneliness, and the tacit acceptance of certain lives as superfluous echo the political and cultural decay she identified decades ago. Her work helps illuminate the roots of these issues, connecting them to historical patterns of dehumanization and political failure.

A call to defiance. Beyond diagnosing dark times, Arendt's core question was always about freedom. She believed that even in bleak historical moments, the determination to think creatively, courageously, and complicatedly matters most. Her legacy offers not quick fixes, but a model for thinking when conventional safety rails are gone, urging us to protect the world we love by having the courage to disobey.

2. Thinking as a Radical Act: Cultivating an Enlarged Mentality

There are no dangerous thoughts, thinking itself is dangerous.

Thinking for oneself. Arendt, deeply influenced by Kant and Socrates, saw thinking not just as intellectual reasoning but as a constant, internal "two-in-one" dialogue. This "self-thinking" (Selbestdenken) is ordinary, accessible to anyone, and is the origin of both thinking and morality. It means making up your mind anew when confronted with difficulties, rather than relying on dogma or external authority.

Beyond reason. For Arendt, thinking wasn't just Kant's cool Vernunft (reason) but also Verstand (intellect, understanding, reflection). It's the restless work of questioning and perplexity, responding to the environment, events, and other people. This process is indifferent to chronological time or identity, focusing instead on the sheer activity of the mind.

A defense against tyranny. Embracing perplexity and thinking for oneself is Arendt's first line of resistance against absolutism and thoughtlessness. She learned early that relying on others, even clever intellectuals, to do the important thinking could be catastrophic, as demonstrated by the complicity of many academics during the rise of Nazism. Thinking, in her view, is how we get our second, third, and fourth births, adapting to new realities by comprehending them and, when necessary, resisting them.

3. The Priceless Advantage of the Pariah: Seeing Reality from the Outside

The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.

Statelessness as perspective. Arendt's experience as a stateless refugee profoundly shaped her political thought, giving her the viewpoint of those outside the conventional political terrain. This "priceless advantage of the pariah" allowed her to see the reality beyond lies and propaganda, understanding exactly what it meant when people lost their home, occupation, language, and private lives.

Exposing the fragility of rights. Her statelessness revealed the fundamental weakness of universal human rights when divorced from citizenship and belonging to an organized political community. The refugees of the 1930s, stripped of their national rights, demonstrated that the world found nothing sacred in abstract humanity when confronted with people who had lost everything but the quality of being human. This exposed the weak spot in a system reliant solely on nation-states and goodwill.

A call to visibility. Arendt's own activism, initially clandestine, evolved into a commitment to political visibility. She understood that totalitarianism aimed to make people superfluous and invisible, consigning them to "holes of oblivion." Resisting this meant insisting on the right to appear, to speak, and to be seen as a person before others. The refugee, by insisting on telling the truth of their existence, becomes a vanguard, revealing the true predicament of a world that denies the right to have rights.

4. Love, Plurality, and the Human Condition: Volo Ut Sis

Men get together as persons because they need each other (love).

Love's paradox. For Arendt, love is central to human existence, making us plural and alive to one another. Yet, precisely because of its power, love can be politically dangerous when it spills into the public realm, potentially becoming monstrous or inhuman when used in the name of ideologies or abstract humanity. She witnessed how much damage is done in the name of love.

Volo ut sis. Arendt adopted the phrase "Volo ut sis" ("I want you to be") as a core expression of love, signifying the affirmation of another's existence simply for who they are. This idea, which she explored in her dissertation on Saint Augustine and later attributed to Heidegger, became her counterpoint to philosophies that prioritized abstract Being or the isolated self. It emphasizes the importance of others for our own existence and meaning.

Love and plurality. Love, in its singular appreciation of human otherness, affirms the plurality of the world. It is a private passion that connects us to a larger human story and brings something new into the world ("natality"). While love is "worldless" and best kept out of politics, it is the pre-political condition that makes us capable of building a human world together. The recognition of our shared need for one another, rooted in love, is essential for any meaningful political community.

5. Race and the Origins of Totalitarianism: Insights and Blind Spots

Race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death.

Racism as catastrophe. Arendt was a powerful historian of modern racism, arguing that it was not merely an accessory but the catastrophe itself, leading to the "unnatural death" of humanity. She traced its origins from 19th-century anti-semitism to European imperialism, showing how ideologies of racial supremacy were used to justify conquest, exploitation, and administrative brutality in Africa and India.

The boomerang effect. She argued that the dehumanizing practices developed in the colonies, such as administrative massacres and the treatment of people as superfluous, boomeranged back to Europe, providing the "elementary structures" that enabled totalitarianism. This connected the camps in Africa to the death camps in Europe, highlighting a shared history of organized barbarity.

Blind spots in America. Despite her insights into racism's global history, Arendt struggled to fully comprehend American racism and Black resistance. Her controversial "Reflections on Little Rock" essay, criticizing school desegregation and Black parents, revealed a failure to see the reality of Black lives and the political agency of activists like the Little Rock Nine. She underestimated the depth of American racial violence and the significance of Black struggles for visibility and rights, demonstrating that even principled anti-racist thinkers can have significant blind spots.

6. The Banality of Evil: Thoughtlessness as Catastrophe

It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

A new kind of criminal. Arendt's report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann introduced the controversial concept of the "banality of evil." She argued that Eichmann was not a demonic monster but a terrifyingly ordinary man, whose evil stemmed from a profound thoughtlessness (Gedankenlosigkeit) and inability to think from the perspective of others. His crime was administrative, executed with detached bureaucratic efficiency rather than sadistic intent.

The failure of judgment. What astounded Arendt was Eichmann's lack of moral or imaginative grasp of his actions. He spoke in clichés, his language empty and detached from reality. This thoughtlessness, she argued, was the condition that enabled the Holocaust, demonstrating how evil could become commonplace when people lose the capacity for independent judgment and connection to reality.

Beyond comprehension. The banality of Eichmann's evil challenged traditional moral and legal categories. It was a crime so monstrous it seemed to "explode the limits of the law," making it difficult to punish or forgive. Arendt's controversial tone and critique of the trial's theatricality stemmed from her attempt to force an encounter with this new, thought-defying form of evil, which she believed the world was not yet ready to comprehend.

7. Totalitarianism's Legacy: Loneliness and the Erosion of Reality

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

Beyond terror. While terror was the engine of totalitarian regimes, Arendt argued that their true existential experience was profound loneliness. This wasn't just physical isolation but a terrifying sense of total abandonment, where individuals were atomized and lost the capacity for genuine contact with others and reality itself. This condition, she feared, was becoming endemic in modern mass societies, not just under dictatorships.

The death of common sense. Totalitarianism thrived by destroying the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false. Propaganda didn't just lie; it manufactured a new, consistent reality based on ideology, making it impossible for people to trust their own experience or a shared sense of the world. This erosion of common sense left people susceptible to believing the incredible and outrageous, preferring the coherence of conspiracy theories to the chaos of reality.

Cynicism and thoughtlessness. A key characteristic of totalitarianism, and a dangerous legacy, was cynicism. People became prepared to believe anything while secretly telling themselves it was all lies, losing the capacity for sincere belief or judgment. This moral cynicism, rooted in the belief that "everything is permitted" because "everything is possible," disabled moral choices and allowed evil to become commonplace, a "fungus growing rampant on the surface."

8. The Promise of Politics: Action, Appearance, and Public Happiness

What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.

The Vita Activa. In The Human Condition, Arendt explored the "active life" (Vita Activa), focusing on three fundamental human activities: labor (biological survival), work (creating a durable world of objects), and action (interacting with others in the public realm). Action, rooted in plurality, is the most political activity, revealing who we are through words and deeds and inserting us into the human world.

The space of appearance. Politics, for Arendt, happens in the "space of appearance," a public realm where individuals can show themselves, speak their minds, and act in concert with others. This space is fragile, constantly created and recreated through human interaction. It is here that "public happiness"—the joy of genuine political participation—is found, offering a dimension of experience closed off in private or social life.

Thinking what we are doing. Arendt's simple proposal to "think what we are doing" is an exhortation to reflect on these fundamental activities and the spaces they inhabit. It's a call to bring consciousness to our existence in the world, recognizing that our actions, even when seemingly small, have consequences and contribute to the shared reality we build together. This reflection is crucial for reclaiming agency in a world where political power has become obscured.

9. Revolution's Double Edge: Freedom vs. Necessity and Violence

The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up.

New beginnings. Arendt saw revolutions as the ultimate political new beginnings, moments when people spontaneously act to create freedom and establish a new political order. Inspired by figures like Rosa Luxemburg and the Hungarian revolutionaries of 1956, she admired the courage and creativity of those who seized power "lying in the street" for the sake of freedom itself.

The pathos of suffering. However, Arendt was deeply critical of revolutions driven by necessity and suffering, particularly the French Revolution. When the "wretched" become the driving force, the focus shifts from establishing public freedom to addressing social misery by force. This introduces violence and necessity into the political realm, leading to a "spectacle that has fallen under the sign of Saturn," where the revolution "devours its own children."

Founding vs. liberating. Arendt contrasted the American Revolution, which she believed focused on founding a new political space for freedom, with the French Revolution, which prioritized liberation from necessity. While she idealized the American model (often overlooking its own violence and exclusions), her core point was that a revolution's success lies not just in overthrowing oppression but in establishing durable institutions that protect the space for future political action and plurality, rather than succumbing to the tyranny of abstract ideas or the violence of necessity.

10. The Right to Have Rights: The Foundation of Political Community

We became aware of the existence of a right to have rights…and a right to belong to some kind of organized community, only when millions of people emerged who had lost and could not regain these rights.

Beyond abstract rights. Arendt argued that universal human rights are insufficient without the "right to have rights," which is the right to belong to an organized political community and be a citizen. This right guarantees the ability to live in a framework where one is judged by actions and opinions, to speak, be seen, and appear as a person before others – essentially, the right to be in the political conversation.

The political community. The challenge is to build political communities that can guarantee this right for all. Arendt admired models like the ancient Greek polis, the American revolutionary associations, and the workers' councils of the Hungarian Revolution, which created spaces for direct political participation and mutual promising. These were communities where power resided in the collective action of citizens, not in a sovereign ruler or abstract entity.

Fragility and responsibility. Recognizing the "right to have rights" means acknowledging the fragility of political communities and the human condition itself. It places the responsibility on citizens to actively maintain the political space through mutual promises, dissent, and the courage to appear. When communities fail to protect this right, they risk creating superfluous people and undermining the very foundation of human dignity.

11. Judging in Dark Times: The Imperative of Thought and Responsibility

Best of all will be those who know only one thing for certain: that whatever else happens, as long as we live we shall have to live together with ourselves.

The crisis of judgment. Arendt believed that totalitarianism and modern mass society had created a crisis of judgment, where the ability to distinguish fact from fiction, true from false, and right from wrong was severely impaired. This was evident in Eichmann's thoughtlessness but also in the widespread cynicism and willingness to believe lies in non-totalitarian societies.

Thinking and conscience. Against this, she emphasized the connection between thinking and moral judgment. The internal "two-in-one" dialogue of thinking allows us to test perspectives and determine what we can live with. Those who resist tyranny or social conformity are often those who cannot live with themselves if they comply, demonstrating that conscience is rooted in this solitary thinking process.

The courage to judge. Judging, for Arendt, is not about applying universal rules but about exercising one's capacity to see reality from multiple perspectives and make distinctions. It requires courage, especially in dark times, to face facts and resist the pressure to conform or retreat into thoughtlessness. Even in powerlessness, the admission of one's inability to act can preserve a remnant of strength and the capacity to judge.

12. Freedom to Begin Anew: Natality, Disobedience, and Hope

We are free to change the world and to start something new in it.

Natality as a political concept. Arendt placed "natality"—the fact that new human beings are constantly born into the world—at the center of her political thought. Each new person brings the capacity to act and begin something new, injecting unpredictability and the possibility of change into the human world. This inherent capacity for new beginnings is the source of political hope.

Disobedience as affirmation. Freedom is not a given but is realized through action and, often, disobedience. Acts of civil disobedience, like those of the civil rights movement or the Carnation Revolution, demonstrate the power of people acting together to challenge unjust laws and authorities, affirming their freedom and the possibility of a different reality. This is not lawlessness but acting in the spirit of the laws themselves.

Contingency and hope. Freedom exists within a sea of contingency; things could always be otherwise. This unpredictability is the price of freedom, but also the source of hope. Acknowledging human frailty and the contingent nature of the world allows us to appreciate the miracle of new beginnings and the possibility of changing the world, not through mastery or grand plans, but through courageous action and the willingness to start something new, together.

Last updated: May 14, 2025