ON TALKING AND LISTENING:

Talking is the heart of politics theory and inquiry into judgment as the human faculty that can help re-imagine a common political world. We have to talk with one another and ourselves in order to embrace fully the plurality of human existence. And in talking and judging we build the connections that re-imagine the common world and give meaning to justice. 

Only by talking about our problems do we come not only to understand them, but also begin to address them.

In talking about the world, we make the world visible in its complexity. The world contains a plurality of opinions, an infinity of facts, and the unpredictability of actions.

“Only in the freedom of our speaking with one another does the world as that about which we speak emerge in its objectivity and visibility from all sides.” If we are going to share a common world, we have to encounter that world in its impartiality; and the only way we can encounter that world is by talking with and listening to all the people in it, even those we truly disagree with, those whom we find problematic and offensive.

The talk about fundamental things is important “even though we don’t have anything definite to put on the table in the end.” In conferences and symposia today, there is too often a demand for conclusions or suggestions. Foundations and philanthropists demand outcomes. But Arendt suggests that talking is more than enough. Talking about fundamentals, she argues, “could change the whole atmosphere in which the work is done.” (from Berkowitz)

ON EQUALITY: 

“Politics” in the Greek sense of the word, is therefore centered around freedom, whereby freedom is understood negatively as not being ruled or ruling, and positively as a space which can be created only by men and in which each man moves among his peers. Without those who are my equals, there is no freedom, which is why the man who rules over others-and for that very reason is different from them on principle—is indeed a happier and more enviable man than those over whom he rules, but he is not one whit freer. He too moves in a sphere in which there is no freedom whatever. We find this difficult to understand because we link equality with the concept of justice, not with that of freedom, which is why we misunderstand the Greek term for a free constitution, isonomia, to mean what equality before the law means for us. But isonomia does not mean that all men are equal before the law, or that the law is the same for all, but merely that all have the same claim to political activity, and in the polis this activity primarily took the form of speaking with one another. lsonomia is therefore essentially the equal right to speak, and as such the same thing as isegoria; later, in Polybius, both simply mean isologia. To speak in the form of commanding and to hear in the form of obeying were not considered actual speech and hearing; they were not free because they were bound up with a process defined not by speaking but by doing and laboring. Words, in this case, were only a substitute for doing something, and, in fact, something that presumed the use of force and being forced. When the Greeks said that slaves and barbarians were aneu logou (without words), what they meant was that the situation of slaves and barbarians made them incapable of free speech. The despot, who knows only commands, finds himself in the same situation; in order to speak, he would’ need others who are his equals. Freedom does not require an egalitarian democracy in the modern sense, but rather a quite narrowly limited oligarchy or aristocracy, an arena in which at least a few or the best can interact with one another as equals among equals. This equality has, of course, nothing to do with justice.” (Arendt, Introduction into Politics)

ON POWER:
“The space of appearance comes into being wherever men are together in the manner of speech and action, and therefore pre­dates and precedes all formal constitution of the puhlic realm and the various forms of government, that is, the various forms in which the puhlic realm can be organized. Its peculiarity is that, unlike the spaces which are the work of our hands, it does not sur­vive the actuality of the movement which brought it into being, but disappears not only with the dispersal of men-as in the case of great catastrophes when the body politic of a people is de­stroyed-but with the disappearance or arrest of the activities themselves. Wherever people gather together, it is potentially there, but only potentially, not necessarily and not forever. That civilizations can rise and fall, that mighty empires and great cul­tures can Power is what keeps the puhlic realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence. The word itself, its Greelc equivalent dynamis, like the Latin potentia with its various modem dervatives or the German Macht (which derives from mogen and moglich, not from machen), indicates its “potential” character. Power is always, as we would say, a power potential and not an unchangeahle, measurahle, and reliable entity like force or strength. While strength is the natural quality of an individual seen in isolation, power springs up hetween men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse. Because of this peculiarity, which power shares with all potentialities that can only be actualized hut never fully materialized, power is to an astonishing degree independent of material factors, either of numhers or means. A comparatively small hut well-organized group of men can rule almost indefinitely over large and populous empires, and it is not infrequent in history that small and poor coumries get the better of great and rich nations. (The story of David and Goliath is only metaphorically true; the power of a few can be greater than the power of many, hut in a contest he­tween two men not power but strength decides, and cleverness, that is, brain power, contrihutes materially to the outcome on the same level as muscular force.) Popular revolt against materially strong rulers, on the other hand, may engender an almost irresist­ihle power even if it foregoes the use of violence in the face of materially vastly superior forces. To call this “passive resistance” is certainly an ironic idea; it is one of the most active and efficient ways of action ever devised, because it cannot be countered by fighting, where there may be defeat or victory, but only by mass slaughter in which even the victor is defeated, cheated of his prize, since nobody can rule over dead men.” (Hannah Arendt)