Arendt reconsidered

Shortly after Christmas Brian Leiter linked to this Corey Robin essay on Arendt on totalitarianism, and posed a general question about the political relevance of Hannah Arendt’s work. So far, his post has generated no significant responses. I don’t know if this is because of the post’s timing, or general indifference toward Arendt amongst analytical philosophy. Amongst political theorists, rather than political philosophers, Arendt may gather more attention than just about any other political theorist. My own thoughts are too uninformed, banal and conflicted to bother with, except to say that Robin’s contention that “If Arendt matters today, it is because of her writings on imperialism, Zionism and careerism” moves beyond exaggeration into obfuscation. A significant portion of the Arendt industry draws from On Revolution (in particular, developing and contemplating the nascent democratic theory of the book’s last chapter) and The Human Condition (and her theories of action and agency). I find both books much more interesting than On the Origins of Totalitarianism, but even drawing from that work, a good deal of Arendt scholarship draws from her consideration of the problematique of refugees and the “right to have rights” (See, for a strong example, Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others). So Rubin’s portrait of the contemporary state of Arendt scholarship is simply inaccurate. But the point of this post is to direct anyone with an interesting opinion on Arendt to head over to Leiter’s blog and comment.