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DOI: 10.1177/0090591702030001006 2002 30: 124Political
Theory
DEAN HAMMERHannah Arendt and Roman Political Thought : The
Practice of Theory
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POLITICAL THEORY / February 2002Hammer / HANNAH ARENDT AND ROMAN
POLITICAL THOUGHT
HANNAH ARENDT ANDROMAN POLITICAL THOUGHTThe Practice of
Theory
DEAN HAMMERFranklin and Marshall College
Arendts work shows a continual intellectual engagement with
theRomans. She refers to the political genius of Rome as
legislation andfoundation.1 She suggests that the one political
experience which broughtauthority as word, concept, and reality
into our historythe Roman experi-ence of foundation has been almost
entirely lost and forgotten.2 Shedescribes the Romans loving care
of the world which underlay their dis-tinctive concept of culture.3
She attributes to Cicero the inspiration forAugustines love of
philosophy, the source of Hegels view of philosophy
asreconciliation to the disunity of the world, and the basis for
the view of philo-sophic training as critical for cultivating the
mind for judgment.4 She creditsto the Romans an awareness of
forgiveness that was a wisdom entirelyunknown to the Greeks (HC,
243). She traces back the faculty of makingpromises, fundamental
for the stability of the world, to the Roman legal sys-tem (HC,
243). She argues that the early Christians consciously shaped
theirconcept of immortality after the Roman model, substituting
individual lifefor the political life of the body politic (HC,
315). She opens The Life of theMind with a quote from Cato and
begins the fifth chapter of On Revolutionwith a selection from
Virgil. And she looks to the Romans in her elevation ofcourage as a
political virtue, in her discussion of freedom, and in her notion
oftradition.5
Yet these connections remain largely unexplored. Instead,
disputes aboutArendts indebtedness to the ancients are more often
fought on the terrain ofAthens. Macauley notes an instance when
Arendt seems to prize the Romanperspective over the Greek, adding
parenthetically, somewhat untypi-
124
AUTHORS NOTE: My thanks to Thomas Banks, Kerry Whiteside, and
the reviewers for thisjournal for their comments on earlier drafts
of this essay, and to Marina Lutova and MichaelKicey for their
research assistance.POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 30 No. 1, February 2002
124-149 2002 Sage Publications
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cally.6 OSullivan suggests that although Rome stands high in
Arendtsestimation, it is the life of the Greek polis (as theorized
by Aristotle),which constitutes the focal point of all her
thought.7 Kateb speaks only of thephilosophical incapacity of the
Romans that makes it extremely arduousto rescue the original
meaning of political action.8 Villa, in his wide-rangingcollection
of essays, takes note of Arendts beloved Greeks but makes nomention
of the Romans.9 And indicative of the desire to Hellenize not
justArendt, but a Western philosophic tradition, Springborg omits
any influenceof the Romans on Arendt. She places Arendt in a
tradition that includesMachiavelli and Montesquieu who she
describes, in a surprising claim, asguided by the desire to
legitimise the Western nation-state as heir to thepolitical
institutions of Athens.10 This requires ignoring not just the
essaysand passages in Arendt when she talks about the distinctive
contributions ofRome, but both Machiavellis and Montesquieus stated
and demonstrableelevation of Rome over Greece.
Canovan, in broadening the scope of discussion, notes quite
rightly thatwe need to abandon the conventional picture of Arendt
judging modern pol-itics in the light of a straightforward and
unambiguous theory of actionderived chiefly from an idealisation of
Athens.11 But even when scholarshave noted Arendts mention of the
Romansmost notably her discussion ofRoman notions of tradition,
authority, and culturethey have been reluctantto assign conceptual
form to Roman thinking and, related to this, to explorethe
significance of their influence on Arendts thought.12 As Canovan
writes,The Romans had been too lacking in the sparkling creativity
of the quarrel-some Athenians to be able to articulate their own
political discoveries. Asevidence, she cites a statement by Arendt
that I like Greek antiquity but Inever liked Roman antiquity.13
True enough. Arendt may not have derived visceral pleasure from
readingthe Romans. But in the passage that Canovan cites, Arendt
goes on to say thatthe reason she read the Romans was precisely to
understand the inspirationfor Montesquieu and Machiavelli (who do
excite her). More than a specificconcept, the importance of the
Romans for Arendt, like for Machiavelli andMontesquieu, is that
they provide a way of thinking about politics that givesform to
political ideas. That is,what the Romans said was seen as tied
inextri-cably to how it was said. To draw on an image from
Wittgenstein, like thestrength of the thread that does not reside
in the fact that some one fiberruns through its whole length, but
in the overlapping of many fibers, soArendt sees the concepts of
the Romans as emerging through the twisting andintertwining of the
particulars of political life.14 When Arendt looks to theRomans, a
tradition that is itself quite diverse, it is not as a form of
nostalgia inwhich she wishes to renew the thread of tradition
[that] is broken, but as a
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model of how we might discover the past for ourselves from the
fragmentsthat remain (LM, 1:212; CC, 204). In Virgil, Arendt sees
the poetic enactmentof a legendary past. This poetry appears as a
form of political thinking thatserves as a paradigm for how we
might start something anew from the frag-ments of the past. In the
Roman historiographic tradition, Arendt identifies aform of writing
in which the animating forces of politics are given formthrough the
impressions, reactions, and conclusions of political actors.
Thereaders of history, in turn, become spectators who participate
in this livingpast. Finally, Arendt identifies in Cicero a notion
of philosophic thinking thatis surprisingly contemporary in its
feel. For Cicero, like for Arendt, the tradi-tions of the past have
disintegrated, creating a longing to escape the disunityof the
world. Cicero advances a notion of philosophic training that both
curesthe despairing mind of its ills by pointing to a realm beyond
and prepares themind, as well, for a care and cultivation of the
world.
Cicero, Virgil, and the Roman historiographers play a critical
role inArendts thinking, I will suggest, not because of their
association with anyone concept or practice, but because they
provide a way of thinking thataddresses a deeper conceptual issue:
how political theory might address thePlatonic separation of
knowing and doing (HC, 225). By bringing Arendtinto a long overdue
conversation with the Romans, we gain insight not onlyinto what
Arendt saw as the distinctive contributions of the Romans to
howpolitical thinking can participate in the task of building a
common world, butalso into how we might, in turn, read the Romans
as political thinkers.
VIRGIL
When Arendt speaks about the separation of knowing and doing,
she isaddressing a view of philosophic thought, beginning with
Plato, that not onlyprivileges contemplation over action but also
separates knowing from doing.For Plato and philosophy to follow,
doing becomes the execution of a schemeof knowing. The danger of
the separation of knowing and doing, Arendtargues, is that it leads
to the disappearance of an authentic understanding ofhuman freedom
in political philosophy (HC, 225). Doing, as it is placedunder the
command of knowing, becomes an instrument of an idea. Lost inthe
instrumentalization of action is the spontaneity of beginning that
is at thecore of human freedom.
Since action, insofar as it is free, is neither under the
guidance of theintellect nor under the dictate of the will, an
enormous abyss opens up(WF, 152; LM, 2:207). The abyss, for Arendt,
is a temporal more than a spa-
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tial metaphor. It is a gap that arises with the interruption of
the sequence ofcause and effect. All action, for Arendt, has an
element of arbitrariness to it,as it could as easily have been done
as not done (LM, 2:207). This arbitrari-ness is a particular
problem in the paradigmatic form of action, the act offounding in
which a We is constituted in the darkness and mystery of abeginning
without a prior cause (LM, 2:202). Founding exemplifies the
free-dom associated with action as it begins, inserting something
new into theworld, but is not caused. Yet founding, if it is to be
successful, turns into acause of whatever follows (LM, 2:210). The
act of foundation, thus, createsa perplexity in two ways. First,
foundation must be able to justify its ori-gins, even as it appears
without a cause. And second, foundation must allowfor the freedom
of future action, even though it is a cause (LM, 2:202,209-10).
Arendts interest in founding relates to a larger concern of hers
with therecovery of action in the modern world. The task of new
generations is notunlike that of founders: they must plot a new
path, starting from a past thatpresents itself only in fragments
(LM, 1:212). Arendt identifies two possiblemodels of founding: one
Hebrew and one Roman.15 The Israelites date theirfounding as a
people back to the Creation of the universe (and of time) by
aneternal God. Although the beginning is still shrouded in mystery,
it is onemade mysterious by the human inability to comprehend the
infinite. Creationserves not only as an origin at the beginning of
time but also as the basis forfuture action. Humans are to live and
act in accord with Gods will because ofthe Justness, Perfection,
and Goodness of Creation (LM, 2:208).
In a world that can no longer ground its political life in
Creation, though,men of action sought to understand how to prepare
for an entirely newbeginning by turning not to the Israelites but
to the Romans (LM, 2:210).The Romans, Arendt claims, provides a
lesson in the art of foundation anda solution to the perplexities
inherent in every beginning (LM, 2:210). In arather surprising
claim, Arendt suggests that this solution is preeminentlypolitical
and expressed in its purest form by Virgil (LM, 1:152). But inwhat
way does Virgil provide any conceptual guidance to the task of
founda-tion? He certainly does not develop a philosophy, if by that
is meant, asArendt suggests, the science that deals with the mind
sheerly as con-sciousness (LM, 1:155). Arendt specifically
distinguishes Virgils poetryfrom Roman philosophy in the imperial
age, which with the loss of the respublica becomes preoccupied with
leaving the world through thought (LM,1:152). Nor does Virgil
provide a formal theory that offers definitions andposits
relations. Virgils discussion is not even meant to be universal,
but islocated in a particular tradition (or traditions) that are
specific to Roman cul-
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tural life. And worse still, the story is not based on any
verifiable historicalfacts, but weaves together, even by the Romans
own admission, myth, leg-end, and poetic invention.16
It is precisely through an imaginative interpretation of old
tales, Arendtsuggests, that the distance of human beginning could
be reached by memory(LM, 2:203). These tales become the way in
which former generations couldcome to grips with the mysterious In
the beginning (LM, 2:203).Through the construction of a
myth-history, Virgil provides an image offounding that organizes
the Romans understanding of their past. Perhapsmore surprisingly,
though, given the specifically local character of Virgilsstory,
later political theorists like Machiavelli and political actors
like theAmerican founders would look to this story of founding to
make sense ofnew, and quite different, circumstances. As Arendt
notes, the Americanfounders, in revising Virgils line frommagnus
ordo saeclorum to novus ordosaeclorum, admitted that the thread of
continuity which bound Occidentalpolitics back to the foundation of
the eternal city had been broken (OR, 212).In portraying themselves
as establishing a new Rome rather than Romeanew, the American
founders saw in Virgil a paradigm of founding and act-ing by which
they could understand, organize, and express the fundamentallynew
experiences that they were encountering (LM, 2:203, 211, on Virgil
asparadigmatic). They would begin weaving the fibers of a new
thread.
One of the great contributions of the Romans, for Arendt, is
that they placethe constitution of themselves as an identifiable
community entirely withinthe realm of human affairs rather than in
a source that stands outside history.Virgil, in consolidating
founding stories that can be traced back to the thirdcentury B.C.,
locates Roman ancestry in Aeneas, whose wanderings after thefall of
Troy bring him to Italian shores (LM, 2:211).17 The task of
foundingappears, thus, not as an absolutely new beginning but as
the resurgence ofTroy and the re-establishment of a city-state that
had preceded Rome(LM, 2:211-12).18
Canovan suggests that in tracing their origins to Troy, Virgil
and theRomans actually dodged the problems of beginning,
sidestepped the frat-ricidal violence of Romulus, and concealed
rather than articulated theirexperience of beginning.19 To be sure,
the Romans do not stare into an exis-tential abyss. But they do not
flinch from the potential violence of origins,either, as suggested
by their fusing the indigenous and violent tradition ofRomulus with
a newer variation on the equally violent Hellenic legend of
theTrojan war.20
The Roman notion of founding, in fact, may serve as a corrective
to plac-ing too much emphasis on the philosophic problem of
absolutely new begin-ning, in which we ask how something comes from
nothing (LM, 2:211; see
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also 2:205). Although Arendt raises the issue, political
founding does notseem to rest on solving this particular problem,
if for no other reason than thatearthly beginnings always occur in
a world that precedes us. The problem ofbeginning in a political
context seems to lie more in the interruption of time,between the
no more of some prior order and the not yet of a new order(LM,
2:204). In the founding legends of both the Israelites and the
Romans,the interruption of time appears as the gap between
liberation from an olderorder and the establishment of freedom
through the constituting of a neworder (OR, 205; LM, 2:204). In
this regard, the Aeneid does not dodge theproblem of beginning, but
becomes precisely a story of the hiatus betweenliberationAeneass
escape from the destruction of Troyand free-domthe establishment of
a city (LM, 2:204). The lesson that emerges inthis recasting of old
tales is that freedom is not an automatic result of libera-tion
(LM, 2:204). What stood out to men of action who looked to
thesefounding legends was not the marvelously colorful tales of
adventure butthe process by which a yet-constituted people prepares
for a new beginning(LM, 2:204). The preparation for founding is
constructed by way of a reversalof Homer in which Aeneas, the
vanquished, now emerges as the victor. Thewar does not result in
the utter destruction for the vanquished but a new bodypolitic
founded on equality and formed through a mutual promise:
bothnations unconquered join treaty under equal laws forever (LM,
2:204).21
For Virgil, the founding of Rome marks the beginning of time,
not as ametaphysical moment but as counting time ab urbe condita
(LM, 2:213).The phrase, which roughly translates as from the
founding of the city,serves as the title to Livys history of Rome
and suggests, in Arendts inter-pretation of Virgil, that history
begins when there are tales to tell of humansliving and acting
together. Thus, the Aeneid, as Virgil makes clear in theopening
verse, is a song of a man who would found a city (dum
condereturbem) (A, 1.5).
What exists in the land of Rome before the founding is not
nothingness.Quite the opposite; in his pastoral poem the Georgics,
Virgil begins with aninvocation that orients the reader to a world
that is both unfamiliar and priorto us. In the words of one
Virgilian scholar, Virgil makes the very beginningof his poem
address what we might call the problem of beginning, namelythat one
is always beginning and that ones beginnings are always already
inanother context.22 Before the founding of the city is a land of
abundanceunder the reign of Saturn (G, 1.128; LM, 2:213). Those who
inhabited thisland, as Virgil writes, lived a life of purity,
knowing the rural gods andremaining unaffected by concerns of
honor, the rules of kings, the envy of therich, the rigors of law,
and the madness of the Forum (G, 2.490-512). But inthis golden age
of Saturn, in which there is an abundance of natures produce,
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there is no tale [numerus] of the manifold kinds or of the names
they bear, nor trulywere the tale [numero] worth reckoning out;
whoso will know [scire] it, let him . . . learnlikewise how many
grains of sand eddy in the west wind on the plain of Libya, orcount
. . . how many waves come shoreward across Ionian seas. (LM, 2:213;
G, 2.537,103-8)
Arendts translation of numerus as tale is probably not
completely justi-fied, for what Virgil is describing is the almost
limitless numbering of speciesand varieties of plants and animals.
But Arendt is correct in suggesting thatthis bucolic life, as it
exists in harmony with the infinite repetition of nature,does not
yield great deeds. The farmer, as he toils to the rhythm of the
sea-sons, exists in anonymity.
The arrival of Aeneas on the shores of Italy appears as the
beginning oftime, not because nothing precedes him, but because he
establishes a politicalworld that makes possible the enactment of
tales to tell, to remember, andpreserve (LM, 2:213). In serving
successfully as the basis by which futuregenerations orient
themselves, and thus answering to the perplexity of howone
establishes the authority of a new beginning, the Roman foundation
facesa second perplexity: how, given its authoritative status, does
it make possiblethe future experience of freedom? Canovan
characterizes the Roman experi-ence of foundation as a once-for-all
affair that establishes a political worldand leaves successive
generations to carry it on rather than to repeat the expe-rience of
action.23 But Canovans conclusion is in need of revision for
tworeasons. First, the Roman conception of founding is distinctive
and in factpoints to a significant departure from a Greek
conception precisely becausefounding is not seen as a once-for-all
affair. Founding appears much moreas an incremental process, in
which successive founders (deincepsconditores), in Livys words,
variously shape Roman customs, laws, andinstitutions.24 Second,
Canovan seems to apply an impossible standard inwhich true freedom
can know neither time nor history. For Arendt, freedomneed not
(and, I would suggest, cannot) lie in an absolute beginning
butappears necessarily in an already constituted world. In Arendts
well-knownassociation of the freedom of action with natality, the
birth of a child bringssomething new into the world, but there
always was a world before theirarrival and there always will be a
world after their departure (LM, 1:20).25
Although the association of political action with natality is
most oftenassociated with Arendts discussion of Augustine, Arendt,
in fact, attributesthis image to Virgil (and, in turn, to
Augustines Roman heritage) (see OR,210-11). Seery argues, in his
recent exploration of the concept of foundation,that Arendts use of
a metaphor of birth is both unconvincingly attributed toVirgil and
represents a shift in focus toward the self and away from
politics,that is, toward the existential hiatus between not-living
and death instead of
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the political hiatus between liberation and freedom.26 Although
I think thatSeery has identified Arendts own ambivalence about the
potential violencethat is associated with artistic building, I am
not so sure that images of birthdo not find political expression in
Virgil. Arendt traces the image of foundingas birth back to Virgils
fourthEclogue, which celebrates the reign of Augus-tus as the
beginning of a new order (magnus ab integro saeclorum
nasciturordo).27 This new order is one in which a new child and new
generation (novaprogenies) are born into earth (E, 4.7-8). The
birth of a new age, like the birthof a child, is not an absolutely
new beginning, but is a beginning within thecontinuity of history
(OR, 211). The child, like successive generations ofRomans, comes
to know the glories of heroes (heroum laudes) and the deedsof his
father (facta parentis) so that he may learn of valor (virtus)
(E,4.26-27). As he learns of the world, he will then be ready to
rule, releasing theearth from its continual dread (E, 4.14).
Although Augustus follows in thetradition of the Roman founding,
his birth, nonetheless, revives the world. InVirgils description of
this almost miraculous transformation, when Augus-tus brings the
world under his rule, slowly will the plains yellow with thewaving
corn, on wild brambles the purple grape will hang, and the
stubbornoak distil dewey honey (E, 4.28-30). For the Romans, as
Arendt suggests,the worlds salvation lay not in Divine beginning,
but in the divinity of birthas such.28 Birth appears as a miracle,
both because its appearance cannot bereduced to some prior cause
and also because it offers to redeem theworldto make human the
natural processes of biological life. The capacityfor beginning, as
Arendt argues, could have become the ontological under-pinning for
a truly Roman or Virgilian philosophy of politics in whichhuman
beings, new men, again and again appear in the world by virtue
ofbirth (LM, 2:216-17).
Arendt speaks in the subjunctive because Virgil does not develop
a phi-losophy. In Book 6 of the Aeneid, he does vividly portray an
ontology inwhich birth appears as the rebirth of the soul (A,
6.748-51). But what is dis-tinctive about Virgil for Arendt is that
he expresses the Roman political expe-rience in its purest form
(LM, 1:152). Arendt never explains what shemeans by that. But she
provides us with a hint when she juxtaposes Virgil tothe emergence
of a Roman philosophic style whose aim was to teach menhow to cure
their despairing minds by escaping from the world through think-ing
(LM, 1:152). For Arendt, Roman philosophy, which would have
anenormous influence on such important thinkers as Hegel, emerges
at a pointin which the political realm was disintegrating, and
there was a resulting dis-unity of man and world that gave rise to
the desire to find another world,more harmonious and more
meaningful (LM, 1:153). Virgil provides a pureform of political
thinking because his writing does not leave this world to cre-
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ate another but arises directly from the experiences of action
in the world.Some sense of the close association between thinking
and action in Virgilswriting is suggested by his use of condere,
which means to fashion, found, orestablish. The Aeneid appears as a
story of how Aeneas would build(conderet) a city, just as Romulus
will found (condet) the walls of Mars andcall the people Romans,
and just as Augustus will again establish (condet) aGolden Age (A,
1.5, 1.276-77, 6.792-95). In his sixthEclogue, in what is
seengenerally as a self-conscious characterization of the task of
the poet, Virgildescribes the ability of bards to build (condere) a
story (E, 6.7). In this sense,Virgils form of thinking does not
stand outside the founding of Rome todescribe it. He does not
attempt to systematize what is distinctive, abstractwhat is
particular, or provide a model of what does not have a cause.
Instead,as an act of poetic building, the poet reenacts the
founding as he brings some-thing new into the world.
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Arendt looks not just to Virgils epic construction of a Roman
foundingbut also to a historiographic tradition that Arendt aptly
characterizes as astorehouse of examples that the past had
accumulated for the benefit ofthe present.29 Arendt sees in
history, scholars rightly suggest, a repositoryof human experience
by which we can find permanent human possibilitiesthat are wider
than those known and expected within our own culture.30
His-toriography assumes importance as a counterpoint to what in
Arendts termsis an antipolitical tradition of Western political
thinking that privileges thecontemplative over the active life.
Unlike philosophy, which seeks refugefrom politics, Greek and Roman
historiography provide a record of the expe-riences of men of
action themselves.31
Arendt is certainly reacting to a philosophic tradition in which
doing ismade subordinate to knowing. It is not just that philosophy
privileges con-templation over action, though, but that modern
theoretical and social scien-tific approaches have made it
difficult to understand how the particulars ofhuman history can
even contribute to the task of political thinking. Mostobvious is a
modern philosophic sense, articulated notably by Kant andHegel,
that historical events, by themselves, appear accidental,
meaningless,and futile.32 Kant, for example, in Idea for a
Universal History, suggeststhat absent a purpose or natural design
(Naturabsicht), we no longer have reg-ularity (gesetzmige) but the
aimless play of nature (zwecklos spielendeNatur) in which, in
Arendts translation, melancholy haphazardness (trostloseUngefhr)
prevails.33 Through their philosophies of history, Kant and
Hegel
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sought to make events meaningful by placing them in the context
of an entirehistorical process, whether of consciousness, freedom,
or morality (CH, 86,also 82).
Even as Kantian and Hegelian ways of understanding the process
andprogress of history have fallen into disuse, the emphasis on
discerning broadpatterns remains. In her Epilogue to The Concept of
History, Arendt sug-gests that through the influence of more
scientific approaches, historians andsocial scientists have come to
construct hypotheses about causal relation-ships between events.
From this perspective, events become important asthey are seen as
confirming or disconfirming evidence for more general his-torical
patterns (CH, 86-87). Extending Arendts argument further, we
canidentify a further distancing of the theoretical enterprise from
history as polit-ical theorists in the twentieth century reacted
both to older forms of specula-tive history and to the newer
emphasis on methods for analyzing politicalbehavior. History, in
general, and the Romans, in particular, get read out ofpolitical
thought as theorists seek to ground political concepts in more
sys-tematic, ahistorical approaches, in natural right, or by
transcend[ing] his-tory to explore the ontological underpinnings of
political life.34 There is aprofound consequence to these
philosophic, theoretical, and social scientificconceptions of
history that relates to Arendts overarching concern with
thesubordination of doing to knowing. For Kant and Hegel, action
becomescomprehensible only through reference to the unfolding of an
idea. For politi-cal theorists, action becomes meaningful as it
becomes an aspect, to useWolins language, of political vision.35
And for more scientific approachesto history, the event becomes the
natural consequence of the hypothesis (CH,87-88). In each case,
doing is made comprehensible by knowing. Lost in theprocess of
history is the deed. And lost in the activity of thinking is
history.
The Romans provide, for Arendt, an instructive contrast. Rather
thanevents acquiring meaning through reference to some larger
process, the les-son of each event, deed, or occurrence is revealed
in and by itself (CH, 64).Causality and context remain important,
but are seen in a light provided bythe event itself, illuminating a
specific segment of human affairs (CH, 64).And, as Arendt
continues, Everything that was done or happened containedand
disclosed its share of generalmeaning within the confines of its
individ-ual shape and did not need a developing and engulfing
process to become sig-nificant (CH, 64). Through this series of
characterizations, Arendt seems tosuggest that Roman historiography
serves as more than a repository ofinstances but as making some
conceptual contribution to political thinking.This is indicated not
only by Arendts claim that some general meaningis disclosed, but
also in her explicit claim elsewhere that the Romansbrought
authority as word, concept [italics added], and reality into our
his-
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tory (WA, 136). But given the strange lack of philosophic talent
by theRomans, as Arendt characterizes them at one point, what is
the nature of theirconceptual contribution?36 What general meaning
is disclosed in theirtelling of history?
Although Roman historiography is hardly of one voice in its
method orsubstance, there is a distinctive feel to it that defies
an easy answer to thisquestion and an easy comparison with other
historical, narrative, or theoreti-cal approaches. A dizzying array
of names and events present themselves thatseem at times to
chronicle, other times to narrate, but seldom to theorize,about
Roman politics. We will be frustrated if we hold the Romans to
todaysstandards of historical investigation and accuracy, not
because the Romansnecessarily fabricated the past, but because
verifiable evidence from much ofRoman history, particularly the
early republican era, is absent.37 We will bedisappointed, as well,
if we bring to Roman historiography our own expecta-tions of what
counts as good narration. Events are often placed next to
eachother, not because they form some narrative whole but because
of the influ-ence of an annalist tradition in which chronology
rather than theme dictatesthe presentation.38
What the Romans do convey, as a number of scholars have noted
recently,is a sense of the past as a spectacle. Events acquire
meaning as they areviewed and, in turn, represented by way of the
impressions, reactions, andconclusions of the spectators. Polybius,
who becomes an early and influentialvoice in Roman historiography,
stresses the value of vividness (emphasis)and animation (energeia)
in historical writing.39 His aim is to arouse in thereader an
admiration (from thaumaz) for the deeds and accomplishments ofthe
past.40 Sallust remarks that it is the memory of great deeds
(memoriarerum gestarum) that incites in noble men the desire for
fame and glory.41Tacitus characterizes the highest purpose of the
historians craft as relating toposterity those words and deeds that
are conspicuous (notabilis) by eithertheir excellences or infamy.42
For Livy, history is a res gestae, a record ofdeeds worthy of
memory (dignum memoria).43 Historiography is like aconspicuous
monument (inlustre monumentum) by which you behold(intueri) the
lessons (exempli) of every kind of experience.44 Etymolog-ically,
monumentum derives from the Indo-European root *men-, to think,and
the causative suffix *-yo, suggesting a meaning of something that
makesone think.45 Monumentum is related, as well, to the Latin verb
monere, toremind. Historiography, like a monument, stands in some
way as a visiblereminder of past events that causes the reader to
think (from *men-) or tobehold and contemplate (both senses are
contained in intueri). Feldherrargues convincingly that in
presenting historiography as a monument, Livy isnot attempting to
set the events themselves before the eyes of his audi-
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ence, but the visible traces that they have left behind.46 For
Livy, as forPolybius, Sallust, and Tacitus, the event is
illuminated less through the detailsof setting or the nuances of
character, and more through the actions and reac-tions of the
spectators at the time.47 The visible traces of the past do not
standas a silent monument, mute to the living world, but live on as
the readersbecome, in turn, the spectators.
The resonance with Arendts use of theatrical metaphors to
describe polit-ical action is striking. History is mediated through
the multiple perspectivesof spectators who, through their
responses, lend meaning to the words anddeeds of political
actors.48 The past is made vivid as it is experienced andexpressed
through the gaze of the spectators. Livy, for example, who
Arendtcharacterizes as the great recorder of past events, enlivens
the past throughthis appeal to the senses (WA, 121). He describes
the horror at the won-drous (miraculum) sight of Lucretias dead
body that moves the crowd fromwhispers to indignation and,
ultimately, to the overthrow of the king (1.59, 3;1.50, 3). Or Livy
portrays the amazement (admiratio) at Appiusabductionof Verginia,
the sight of Verginias lifeless body as Icilius and Numitoriushold
it up to show (ostendere) it to the crowd, and the ensuing
excitementreached by the crowd (3.47, 6; 3.48, 7; 3.49, 1).
There is an entertainment value to this presentation of the
past, as manyRoman scholars have noted. But pleasure for Arendt may
have a great deal todo with understanding. Nothing perhaps is more
surprising in this world ofours, writes Arendt, than the almost
infinite diversity of its appearances, thesheer entertainment value
of its views, sounds, and smells, something that ishardly ever
mentioned by the thinkers and philosophers (LM, 1:20). Thishuman
experience of the vividness of the world, which Arendt calls
worldli-ness, is so critical for her because it underlies the
phenomenal reality ofhuman existence. As Arendt notes,
we are of theworld and notmerely in it; we, too, are appearances
by virtue of arriving anddeparting, of appearing and disappearing;
and while we come from a nowhere, we arrivewell equipped to deal
with whatever appears to us and to take part in the play of the
world.(LM, 1:20)
The loss of worldliness is important as a mass phenomenon, in
whichhuman artifice is increasingly swamped by transient consumer
goods andsubject to the rhythms of production and consumption.49
But the loss ofworldliness is also a theoretical phenomenon in
which the living force ofour political concepts gives way to empty
formalisms.50 In a particularlyrevealing passage, Arendt draws a
contrast between how we have faithfullypreserved and further
articulated until they became empty platitudes the dif-
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ferent Greek images of authoritysuch as the statesman as healer
and phy-sician, as expert, as helmsman, as the master who knows, as
educator, as thewise manbut have entirely lost and forgotten the
Roman experiencewhich brought authority as word, concept, and
reality into our history (WA,136). We have so emptied our concepts
of any connection to experience that
it is as though we were caught in a maze of abstractions,
metaphors, and figures of speechin which everything can be taken
and mistaken for something else, because we have noreality, either
in history or in everyday experience, to which we can unanimously
appeal.(WA, 137)
Through the cumulation of the living deed and the spoken word,
what isnot just portrayed, but also experienced, in Roman
historiography are the ani-mating forces of politics: the beliefs,
ideas, habits, and principles that movehumans to act (HC, 206).51
In the rape of Lucretia and the abduction ofVerginia, to continue
the examples from above, Livy traces the responses ofthe crowd
that, in both cases, culminate in political action. In the case
ofLucretia, Brutus inspired (auctorque) the crowd to take up arms
against theTarquins whose lusts now enslaved the people (1.59, 4).
The people not onlyoverthrow the king and establish a republic, but
the degrading experience oftyranny unites the people in a love of
their new liberty. Where freedom couldhave given way to faction,
writes Livy, the severity of the tyranny led plebsand senators to
unite as strongly in guarding liberty as in asserting it (2.1).
So,too, Livy portrays the corruption of public institutions under
the decemvirs,exemplified by Appiuss manipulation of the courts so
that he rules on hisown abduction of Verginia. Appiuss public
action is inspired (oritur) bythe most perverse of motives, his
private lust (libidine) (3.44, 1). In con-trast, the plebeians and
patricians who had been so divided by faction as tosuffer these
abuses are now inspired to act, partly by the atrocity of thecrime
and partly by the opportunity to regain their liberty (3.49, 1).
With theoverthrow of the decemvirs, two consuls are elected who
restore (renovant)the power of the tribunes to initiate
legislation, the right of appeal by the peo-ple, and the almost
forgotten principle of the sacrosancticity of the tri-bunes by
making it a religious crime to strike a representative of the
people(3.55).
In these two scenes, and other examples by other Roman
historians thatare easy to find, Livy shows how the republic is
authorized, both in the initialoverthrow of the kings and then in
the restoration after the decemvirs. Criticalhere is that this
authorization does not derive from abstractions, but is seen
asarising from the inspiring principles of a people: what moves
them to act. Weare not far from Arendts suggestion that authority
(auctoritas) refers back to
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the auctor, the author who inspired the whole enterprise and
whose spiritis represented in Roman customs, laws, and institutions
(WA, 122). Romanauthority, as Arendt notes, had its roots in the
past, but this past was no lesspresent in the actual life of the
city than the power and strength of the living(WA, 122). Arendt is
pointing precisely to a Roman form of writing in whichthe animating
forces of politics that inspired action are not just recounted
butrelived.
We can now begin to address one of Arendts more elusive
concepts, thatof principles. Arendt invokes the notion of
principles to explain how actioncan have shape and meaning without
being subordinated, in turn, to particularmotives or goals (WF,
152). She draws a now well-known, but no less clear,distinction
between the inspiring principle that becomes fully manifestonly in
the performing act itself, the judgment of the intellect which
pre-cedes action and the command of the will that initiates action
(WF, 152).Disch expresses much of the scholarly frustration when
she suggests thatArendt seems at once to invoke and to resist the
conventional understandingof principles.52 At times, Arendt lists
principles that are typically timelessand abstract ideals, such as
honor, glory, virtue, distinction, excellence.53Yet at other times
she will mention principlessuch as fear or distrust orhatred that
are emotional responses that depend on the particular con-text.54
Furthermore, Arendt seems at times to give intellectual content to
prin-ciples but then, at other times, to claim that principles can
only be enacted andnot necessarily expressed.55
I certainly agree with Disch about the ambiguity of Arendts
words. Butby looking at the Roman source of Arendts idea, we can
better understand,perhaps, how Arendt would respond to the issues
raised by Disch.56 First,principles, as they are conveyed in Roman
historiography, necessarilyaddress the emotions. In Livys history
of Rome, what moves people to actare not abstract ideals, but
horror, anger, delight, and excitement that arearoused by the
spectacle of deeds and the persuasion of words. The
principlesarticulated by Roman historiographers are, themselves,
the products of ahighly contextualized tradition in which the
community vests its identity.Tradition defines not only why
something is virtuous, distinct, or honored, aswell as feared,
distrusted, or hated, but also provides the emotional basis
foradherence to these principles.
Second, principles can be articulated but only as a sequence of
actions andnot through abstract formulation. The reason for this is
that the Roman way ofconveying political concepts is not to
describe them as things in themselves,but to display (ostendere)
them to the eyes of the mind (oculis mentis).57The unseenthe
animating forces of politicsare made visible to the mind
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as we are made spectators who view, respond, make connections,
and drawconclusions about how and why something happened.
And third, the importance of principles lies in how they
perpetuate a com-mon world by simultaneously making a past alive in
the present and by mak-ing a contemporary audience participants in
a past. The art of politics,Arendt notes, teaches men how to bring
forth what is great and radiant (HC,206). The insistence on the
living deed and the spoken word as the greatestachievements of
which human beings are capable, Arendt continues, wasconceptualized
in Aristotles notion of energeia (actuality), which desig-nates
activities that do not pursue an end and leave no work behind
(HC,206). The work, in this case, is not what follows and
extinguishes the pro-cess but is imbedded in it; the performance is
the work, is energeia (HC,206). What the Roman historians convey
for Arendt is this sense of actuality,as the portrayal of great
words and deeds in which the meaning of the event isboth imbedded
in the performance of the act and also experienced, again, bythe
spectator. The conceptual importance of Roman historiography lies
in itsability to convey, as it is experienced by the reader, the
animating forces ofpolitical action that arise from within history,
circumstance, and humancharacter.
CICERO
Lest we be left with the impression that the past always shone
with radi-ance for the Romans, we need only encounter Ciceros note
of despair that hesounds in the fifth book ofDeRepublica. The
republic had been passed downlike an extraordinary painting (sicut
picturam egregiam) whose colors werealready fading with age (iam
evanescentem vetustate). But the current gen-erations had neglected
to renew (renovare neglexit) the original colors oreven to have
taken the care to preserve its form or outermost outlines (sed neid
quidem curavit, ut formam saltem eius et extrema tamquam
liniamentaservaret).58 What is lost for Cicero is precisely a vivid
sense of the past: theanimating forces of political action by which
the commonwealth wasfounded and preserved. Now, these republican
customs have so fallen intodecay (obsoletos) that they are no
longer even known, much less practiced.
Ciceros lamentation is of interest to us for two reasons. First,
Ciceroseems to speak to what is, for Arendt, a quite modern
concern: the loss of tra-dition by which individuals orient
themselves in the world. It is in the contextof a fragmented world
that Arendt identifies in Cicero the notion of philoso-phy as animi
medicinaa cure for the despairing mind through a flightfrom the
world (LM, 1:152).59 Second, Cicero seems to identify a way in
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which philosophy, as it results in cultura animia cultivation of
the soulmay also return us to the world.
Arendt suggests in Life of the Mind that philosophy had found a
kind offoster home in Rome during the last century before Christ,
and in that thor-oughly political society it had first of all to
prove that it was good for some-thing (LM, 1:158). One such path of
usefulness, written against a sense of adisintegrating public
realm, was that philosophy could teach men how tocure their
despairing minds by escaping from the world through thinking(LM,
1:152). Philosophy becomes the animi medicina, as Cicero writes
inTusculan Disputations, the art of healing the soul.60 Philosophy,
as articu-lated by Cicero and, in turn, adopted by such thinkers as
Hegel, appears not asa response to reasons need but has an
existential root in unhappiness(LM, 1:153). The disintegration of
reality and the corresponding dis-unityof man and the world creates
a need for another world, more harmoniousand more meaningful (LM,
1:153). Cicero, Arendt argues, would discoverthe thought-trains by
which one could take ones way out of the world (LM,1:157).
Arendt, in pursuing this thought-train, turns to the sixth book
of DeRepublica, which contains Ciceros well-known Scipios Dream. In
thissection, Cicero relates a dream by Scipio Aemilianus in which
his adoptedgrandfather, Scipio Africanus, tells him that he will
destroy Carthage andthen, if he can escape assassination (which he
does not), must return to Romeas dictator to restore the
commonwealth.61 The highest place in the heavens,Scipios ancestor
reminds him, is reserved for those who have preserved,aided, or
enlarged (conservaverint, adiuverint, auxerint) the
common-wealth.62 As Arendt quotes from Cicero,
For the highest god who governs the world likes nothing better
than the assemblies andthe intercourse of men which are called
commonwealths; their governors and conserva-tors return to heaven
after having left this world. Their job on earth is to stand guard
overthe earth.63
Humans are given life, Cicero continues, so that they might
inhabit earth andperform their duty to the community.64
Although the gods favor a devotion to things of the earth, no
commensu-rate human reward can make up for the toiling and
suffering. For whatfame can you gain from the speech of men, asks
Africanus the Elder, orwhat glory that is worth the seeking?65 As
Africanus lifts Scipio into theair, they look back toward the
ever-shrinking earth. Through a process ofwhat Arendt refers to as
relativization, Cicero shows how the earth itself andthe things of
the earth (such as fame and glory, life and death, and the passage
of
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time) now appear insignificant in its place in the cosmos. For
Arendt, Ciceroprovides perhaps the first recorded [example] in
intellectual history of howthinking means following a sequence of
reasoning that will lift you to aviewpoint outside the world of
appearances as well as outside your own life(LM, 1:160).66 Ones
assent upon dying will be still more rapid if the spirit,while
still confined to the body, contemplates what lies outside it
anddetaches itself, as much as possible, from the body.67
Although thinking points outside the world as it provides some
comfortfrom the vicissitudes of earthly life, thinking also points
us back to the world.For Cicero, philosophic life is never in the
place of political action. Devotionto the public realm is tied
specifically to the promise of heavenly rewards, asthe spirit
occupied and trained in such activities will have a swifter flight
tothis, its proper home and permanent abode.68 But there is a more
interestingand subtle connection between the philosophic and the
earthly life, one thatArendt locates in the notion of culture that,
as word and concept, is Romanin origin (CC, 211). Culture derives
from colereto cultivate, to dwell, totake care, to tend and
preserve (CC, 211). Cicero, suggests Arendt, is thefirst to extend
the metaphor of cultivating nature to matters of spirit andmind
(CC, 212). As Cicero writes, Just as a field, however good to
ground,cannot be productive without cultivation (cultura), so the
soul (anima) can-not be productive without teaching. Cicero refers
to this cultivation of thesoul (cultura animi) as philosophy.69
In drawing out the meaning of cultura animi, Arendt contrasts it
explicitlyto a Greek attitude. The Greeks tended to consider even
agriculture as partand parcel of fabrication, as belong to the
cunning, skillful, technicaldevices with which man, more
awe-inspiring than all that is, tames and rulesnature (CC, 212-13).
The Romans, on the other hand, adopted an attitudeof loving care
toward nature and the world so that by tending to the things ofthe
world, they might cultivate a dwelling place for people (CC,
212-13).70This attitude toward worldly things includes not just
tending to nature andtaking care of the monuments of the past, but
also respecting the least use-ful and most worldly of things, the
works of artists, poets, musicians, philoso-phers, and so forth
(CC, 213). Ciceros cultura animi takes on a larger con-notation,
then, as something like taste or sensitivity to beauty (CC, 213).We
are reminded of Livy when Cicero writes that the cultivated mind
occu-pies a stance like a spectator at an athletic contest who is
attracted to the festi-val neither to win glory nor material gain,
but came for the sake of the spec-tacle (visendi) and closely
watched (perspicerent) what was done and how itwas done.71
Arendt carries the contrast between the Greeks and the Romans
still fur-ther, suggesting that the Greek conception of philosophy
as the speechless
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beholding of some unveiled truth may tend more toward inactivity
thanlove of beauty (CC, 214). Moreover, as Arendt asks,
Could it be that this right love of beauty, the proper kind of
intercourse with beautifulthingsthe cultura animiwhich makes man
fit to take care of the things of the world andwhich Cicero, in
contradistinction to the Greeks, ascribed to philosophyhas
somethingto do with politics? (CC, 215)
Answering this question leads Arendt into her well-known
association ofthe faculty of judgment with taste, a discussion she
pursues later in her Lec-tures on Kants Political Philosophy.
Taste, which indicates what for Cicerois the discriminating,
discerning, judging elements of an active love ofbeauty, underlies
what Arendt meant by judgment (CC, 219). Yet, the stanceoccupied by
those exercising taste is that of the spectator who is not
involvedin the act but is always involved with fellow spectators
(LK, 63). In quot-ing from Ciceros On the Orator, Arendt writes,
For everybody discrimi-nates [dijudicare], distinguishes between
right and wrong in matters of artand proportion by some silent
sense without any knowledge of art and pro-portion (LK, 63). Such a
discriminating sense occurs not only for picturesand statues but
also in judging the rhythms and pronunciations of words,since these
are rooted [infixa] in common sense (LK, 63). As McClure notesin
her thoughtful exploration of these Ciceronian pearls in
Arendtsthought, the faculty of judgment, for Cicero, is rooted in
commonsense.72 Judgment does not admit of formal rules but rests on
the sort oftacit knowledge that characterizes ones participation in
ongoing culturalpractices.73
But there is a still greater role that Cicero plays in Arendts
understandingof taste and judgment. The sensitivity to beauty that
is cultivated throughphilosophic training creates culture: the mode
of our intercourse withour worldly products (CC, 218). Culture
offers its space of display to thosethings whose essence it is to
appear and to be beautiful (CC, 218). Theproducts of politics,
words and deeds, share with art the need of some pub-lic space
where they can appear and be seen (CC, 218). Like art, what is
atstake in politics for Arendt is not knowledge or truth but
judgment and decision, the judicious exchange of opinions about
the sphere of public lifeand the common world, and the decision
what manner of action is to be taken in it, as wellas to how it is
to look henceforth, what kind of things are to appear in it. (CC,
223)
Both politics and art similarly face a futility in which their
products, if left tothemselves, come and go without leaving any
trace in the world (CC, 218).Only by bestowing beauty, the very
manifestation of imperishability, can
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the fleeting greatness of word and deed endure (CC, 218).
Culture indi-cates a public attitude of sensitivity to and care for
beauty that ensures theenduring greatness of human action and the
survival of politics.
Arendt comes to this conclusion about the relationship between
politicsand art by way of a seemingly odd discussion about the
ancient tensionbetween the artist, as maker, and the statesman, as
doer. The suspicion of thepolitical actor is that the artist brings
into the public realm a utilitarian atti-tude in which all things
are judged according to their function or utility(CC, 215). This
philistinism, as Arendt describes it, bears directly on hermore
weighty characterization in The Origins of Totalitarianism of
Himmleras a philistine. Himmler, who was more normal, that is, more
of aphilistine, than any of the original leaders of the Nazi
movement, defined thenew type of man as one who under no
circumstance will ever do a thingfor its own sake. 74 The
cultivated mind, as described by Cicero, bears polit-ical
significance in a modern age because of the general invasion of the
men-tality of fabrication into the political realm, an invasion
that appears in itsstarkest form with totalitarianism (CC, 217).
The cultivated mind resists theforces of philistinism as it
appreciates without desiring to own, judges with-out placing a
price, and is disinterested without being uninterested.
CONCLUSION
I began by suggesting that for Arendt, the Romans provide a
method ofpolitical thinking that speaks to the contemporary world.
At first glance, sucha claim seems somewhat problematic because of
the distance, not just in timebut more importantly in belief,
between the Roman and modern world. TheRoman context is one in
which political authority is reinforced by a living tra-dition that
transmits the past and religion that sanctions a piety toward
thispast (see OR, 118; WA, 120-23). Lost in modernity is the thread
of tradition(CC, 204; LM 1:212) by which individuals orient their
lives. We are faced,Arendt suggests, with the abyss of pure
spontaneity by which we aredoomed to be free by virtue of being
born, no matter whether we like free-dom or abhor its
arbitrariness, are pleasedwith it or prefer to escape its awe-some
responsibility by electing some form of fatalism (LM, 2:216-17).
Theresolution to this impasse between a lost certainty and an
intolerable spon-taneity is, as Arendt suggests toward the end of
her second volume ofThe Lifeof the Mind, the faculty of Judgment
(LM, 2:217).
The recovery of judgment is an elusive task, though. It cannot
be taught orrest on theories and ideas but needs to be cultivated
through immersion in theinfinite improbabilities of earthly
existence (WF, 171). How exactly Vir-
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gils poetry, Livys historiography, and Ciceros philosophy
accomplish thistask is nowhere explicitly addressed by Arendt. But,
like so much of herwork, intimations abound.
The contribution of Virgils poetry to political thinking is
expressed mostclearly in Arendts essay on Hermann Broch. Consumed
with a desire tobring certainty to human affairs, Broch sought
first to find a new mythosthat could represent the universe in its
totality. Later, Broch would look to anew logos in which human
experience would become knowable as a systemof laws, axiomatic
propositions, and verifiable facts. Brochs disillusionmentwith
poetry, Arendt suggests, stems from his sense that it is unable to
provideanswers to questions of human existence that have the same
coercive force asthat possessed by mythos on the one hand and logos
on the other.75
The problem of poetry for Broch is exactly its contribution for
Arendt: itimposes no binding edicts (HB, 118); it does not have the
compellingcharacter of themythoswhich it serves (HB, 118); and it
lacks the cogencyof logos (HB, 119). Since poetry is not subject to
the dictates of logic or reli-gion, it employs neither the
incontrovertibility of logical argument nor thefinality of
religious belief (HB, 119). Where Broch, in The Death of
Virgil,would sacrifice the Aeneid for the sake of knowledge, Arendt
suggests thatpoetrys contribution to cognition lies in its use of
metaphor (HB, 116). Meta-phor conveys the oneness of the world by
establishing connections that aresensually perceived in [their]
immediacy76 while simultaneouslyplung[ing] us into the depths of
human contradiction, contingency, andcomplexity (HB, 130). The
poet, as crafter, stands apart from the doer. Butpoetry,
nonetheless, plays a critical role in conveying, without
once-and-for-all explaining, the experience of action:
[the] infinitude of intersecting and interfering intentions and
purposes which, taken alltogether in their complex immensity,
represent the world in which each man must cast hisact, although in
that world no end and no intention has ever been achieved as it was
origi-nally intended. (HB, 147-48)
Livy and Roman historiography play an important role, as well,
in politi-cal thinking. Where poetry is (in Arendts Heideggerian
moments) acousticas it brings forth a world by naming it,77
historiography is visual as it presentsreaders with the visible
traces of human words and deeds. By displayingevery kind of
experience (omnis exempli),78 Livy points to how a world dead-ened
by processes can be enlivened by the movement of words and deeds.
Webecome witnesses not just to the monuments of the past but to the
animatingprinciples that move people to act. Similar to the Romans,
Arendt, in Men inDark Times, makes us spectators in the lives and
works of men and
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women that illuminate, even in the darkest of times, the
possibility and prin-ciples of human action.79 The terms most
central to her argument lack cleardefinition precisely because they
derive their meaning from the uncertaintyand variety of human
affairs. She does not formalize theories and conceptsbut seeks to
identify the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that
illu-minates the concepts that have been lost.80
Absent an ability to judge, our encounters with the enlivening
aspects ofpoetry and history become indiscriminate sensory
experiences. The philo-sophic life described by Cicero, as it
teaches us a love of beauty, cultivates anappreciation and
sensitivity for these aesthetic renderings of human experi-ence.
The ability to discriminate, to form judgments of beauty, has
implica-tions for our relationship toward the world as well. The
philosophic life, asArendt suggests in extending Cicero, shapes an
attitude in which oneknows how to choose his company among men,
among things, amongthoughts, in the present as well as in the past
(CC, 225-26).
For Arendt, the cultivated mind answers both to the problem of
the con-suming nature of modern individuals and of political
judgment. Only whenthe different parts of the world appear
indistinguishable can everything beindiscriminately devoured. The
ability to distinguish brings with it, forArendt, a corresponding
desire to care for and preserve the things of theworld. She is not
seeking in her writing to prove but, like what Cicero con-veyed to
Montesquieu, to instill a feel for what it means to cultivate
theworld.81 Her work, like the writings of the Romans, is an
attempt to locate inthe past the elemental quality of human
artifacts that grasp and move thereader (CC, 203). The point for
Arendt is not that we become Romans;rather, it is that their
practice of political thinking gives practice to the mind sothat
each generation might discover and ploddingly pave anew the path
ofthought (LM, 1:210).
For Arendt, we are first and foremost phenomenal beings who
areequipped to deal with whatever appears to us and to take part in
the play ofthe world (LM, 1:22). The problem of modernity, at least
in part, is that wehave lost that sense of play as we have
subjected the world to the life pro-cesses of production and
consumption. Yet, Arendts plea for us to thinkwhat we are doing
(HC, 5) seems to flounder on a paradox: thinking, as itdeals with
invisibles, threatens to remove us from the world. And, in fact,
ourWestern philosophic tradition seems only to further alienate us
from thisworld of Appearing as it holds out the promisea false one
for Arendtof aworld of true Being. Political theory, taking its cue
from this philosophic tra-dition, is similarly unable to address
human worldlessness as it proceedsfrom abstractions. Arendts call
for us to think what we are doing, thus,requires not only restoring
action to this world but also finding an adequate
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home in the world for thinking (LM, 1:23). The Romans offer just
this possi-bility for Arendt by showing how political thinking can
arise from, andevoke, a world that is sensually perceived. By
seeing and hearing, the politi-cal thinker can restore the lost
movement of thought and judgment to themodern world.
NOTES
1. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1958),195 (hereafter, HC).
2. Hannah Arendt, What Is Authority? Between Past and Future
(New York: Penguin,1968), 136, also 121-22 (hereafter, WA). On the
Romans and authority, see Arendt, On Vio-lence, Crises of the
Republic (New York: Harvest, 1972), 142; and On Revolution (New
York:Penguin, 1965), 201 (hereafter, OR).
3. Hannah Arendt, The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its
Political Significance,BetweenPast and Future, 212-13 (hereafter,
CC).
4. Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, ed. J. Scott and J.
Stark (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1996), 14; The Life of
the Mind, ed. Mary McCarthy (New York: Harvest,1978), 1:153
(hereafter, LM); Crisis in Culture, 211-19; and Lectures on Kants
Political Phi-losophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982), 63-64 (hereafter, LK).
5. Hannah Arendt, What Is Freedom? Between Past and Future, 156,
167 (hereafter,WF); Tradition and the Modern Age,BetweenPast
andFuture, 25; andOnRevolution, 117.
6. David Macauley, Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Place: From
Earth Alienation toOikos, Minding Nature: The Philosophers of
Ecology, ed. David Macauley (New York:Guilford Press, 1996),
117.
7. Noel OSullivan, Hannah Arendt: Hellenic Nostalgia and
Industrial Society, Contem-porary Political Philosophers, ed.
Anthony de Crespigny and Kenneth Minogue (New York:Dodd, Mead,
1975), 229.
8. George Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman &Allanheld, 1983), 7.
9. Dana Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the
Thought of Hannah Arendt(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1999), 132.
10. Patricia Springborg, Hannah Arendt and the Classical
Republican Tradition, HannahArendt: Thinking, Judging, Freedom, ed.
Gisela Kaplan and Clive Kessler (Sydney, Australia:Allen &
Unwin, 1989), 15.
11. Margaret Canovan, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her
Political Thought (Cam-bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 138.
12. Examples of this reluctance include Canovan, Hannah Arendt,
147; Leah Bradshaw,Acting and Thinking: The Political Thought of
Hannah Arendt (Toronto, Canada: University ofToronto Press, 1989),
46; Michael Gottsegen, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt
(Albany:State University of New York Press, 1994), 98-99; Dagmar
Barnouw, Visible Spaces: HannahArendt and the German-Jewish
Experience (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,1990),
26-27; Patricia Bowen-Moore, Hannah Arendts Philosophy of Natality
(New York: St.Martins, 1989), 135-40; Phillip Hansen, Hannah
Arendt: Politics, History and Citizenship(Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1993), 50; and John McGowan, Hannah Arendt:
AnIntroduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998),
34, 65, 94. I would point to
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three exceptions. Kimberly Curtis, in her excellent discussion
of the Roman founding in OurSense of theReal: Aesthetic Experience
andArendtianPolitics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,1999),
suggests the potential conceptual contribution of this attention to
the past:
Human perception gains depth when our efforts to comprehend
something becomeflushed with and enlarged by the resonances of
others efforts. . . . The experience ofdepth is important because
the histories that render human experience meaningful pro-vide us
newcomers with touchstones as we make our way in a new and strange
time, in anas yet unstoried wilderness. (Pp. 111-12)
McClure identifies the influence of Cicero in Arendts discussion
of judgment in Lectures onKants Political Philosophy (Kirstie
McClure, The Odor of Judgment: Exemplarity, Propriety,and Politics
in the Company of Hannah Arendt,HannahArendt and theMeaning of
Politics, ed.Craig Calhoun and John McGowen [Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997],53-84). And Seery explores the
influence of Virgil on Arendts notion of founding (John
Seery,Castles in the Air: An Essay on Political Foundations,
Political Theory 27 [1999]: 460-90).
13. Canovan, Hannah Arendt, 143, n. 165, quoting Hannah Arendt,
On Hannah Arendt,Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World,
ed. Melvyn Hill (New York: St. Martins,1979), 330.
14. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans.
G.E.M. Anscombe (NewYork: Macmillan, 1953), par. 67.
15. See Seery, who develops more fully a distinction between
what he called an Edenic andconstructivist tradition of foundation
(Castles).
16. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, trans. B. O. Foster (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press,1925), Praef. 6-7.
17. See Erich Gruen,Culture andNational Identity in
RepublicanRome (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 1992),
6-51.
18. On the theme of refounding in Livy, see Christina Kraus, No
Second Troy: Topoi andRefoundation in Livy, Book V, Transactions of
the American Philological Association 124(1994): 267-89.
19. Canovan, Hannah Arendt, 223.20. See Virgil,Aeneid,
inEclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough,
revised
G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999),
1.275-77, 6.777-79, 6.876,8.342 (hereafter, A); Virgil, Georgics,
in Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, 1.498-501 (hereafter, G);Livy, Ab
Urbe Condita, 1.4-10; and Gruen, Culture and National Identity,
6-51.
21. See also Arendt, On Revolution, 187, 210; and Virgil,
Aeneid, 12.190-91.22. William Batstone, Virgilian Didaxis: Value
and Meaning in the Georgics, The Cam-
bridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1997), 131.
23. Canovan, Hannah Arendt, 147.24. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 2.1,
2; Cicero, De Re Publica, trans. Clinton Walker Keyes
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 2.2; see T. J.
Luce,Livy: TheComposition ofHis History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1977), 230-49.
25. See Arendt, Love, for her earliest statement of natality and
the world.26. Seery, Castles, 482.27. Virgil, Eclogues, in
Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, 4.5 (hereafter, E); Arendt, On
Revolu-
tion, 210; see also Virgil, Aeneid, 6.792-95.28.
Arendt,OnRevolution, 211;Life of theMind, 2:212; see
Cicero,DeRePublica, 1.7, 12.29. Hannah Arendt, The Concept of
History: Ancient and Modern, Between Past and
Future, 64-65 (hereafter, CH).
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30. Margaret Canovan, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt
(New York: Harcourt,Brace, and Jovanovich, 1974), 11.
31. Ibid., 12. Unfortunately, Canovan does not pursue the
possible importance of Roman his-toriography to Arendts thought. In
fact, in a section that Canovan devotes to Arendts essay,The
Concept of History, Canovan discusses only the ancient Greeks and
makes no referenceto the Romans (Ibid., 100-5).
32. See Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a
Cosmopolitan Point of View,trans. Lewis White Beck, On History, ed.
Beck (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 12-13;and Arendt,
Concept of History, 83, 85.
33. Kant, Idea, 13; and Arendt, Concept of History, 85.34. On
systematic, ahistorical approaches, see William Galston, Political
Theory in the
1980s: Perplexity Amidst Diversity, Political Science: The State
of the Discipline II, ed. AdaFinifter (Washington, DC: American
Political Science Association, 1993), 27-53. On naturalright, see
Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies
(Glencoe, IL: FreePress, 1959). On ontological underpinnings, see
Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuityand Innovation in
Western Political Thought (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), 19.
35. Wolin, Politics, esp. 17-21.36. Arendt, What Is Freedom?
166.37. Critical assessments are provided by Ernst Badian, The
Early Historians, Latin Histo-
rians, ed. T. A. Dorey (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 1-38; and
R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentaryon Livy: Books 1-5 (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon, 1965), 5-7. More sympathetic assessments are pro-vided
by P. G. Walsh, Livy: His Historical Aims andMethods (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1963), chaps. 5-6; Walsh, Livy,
Latin Historians, 115-42; T. J. Luce, Livy: TheComposition of His
History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); Charles
Fornara,The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley:
University of California Press,1983), chap. 3; Timothy Cornell, The
Value of the Literary Tradition Concerning ArchaicRome, Social
Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the
Orders, ed.Kurt Raaflaub (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1986), 52-76; Jrgen vonUngern-Sternberg, The Formation of the
Annalistic Tradition: The Example of theDecemvirate, Social
Struggles, 85; and John Marincola, Authority and Tradition in
AncientHistoriography (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1997), 76-79.
38. Walsh, Livy, 129.39. Polybius,TheHistories, 6 vols., trans.
W. R. Paton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1922), 12.25h, 3.40. Ibid., 8.1, 4.41. Sallust, The War
with Jugurtha, Sallust, trans. J. C. Rolfe (London: William
Heinemann, 1931), 4.6.42. Tacitus, The Annals, trans. John
Jackson (London: William Heinemann, 1925), 3.65. On
Tacitus and spectacle, see Elizabeth Keitel, Foedum Spectaculum
and Related Motifs in TacitusHistories II-III, Rheinisches Museum
fr Philologie 135 (1992): 342-51.
43. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 7.2, 2.44. Ibid., Praef., 10.45. Gary
Miles, Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press,
1995), 17.46. Andrew Feldherr, Spectacle and Society in Livys
History (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1998), 6.47. On Polybius, see James Davidson, The
Gaze in PolybiusHistories, Journal of Roman
Studies 81 (1991): 10-24. On Tacitus, see Keitel, Foedum. On
Lucan, see Matthew Leigh,Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 1997). On Livy, see
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Mary Jaeger, Livys Written Rome (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1997); andFeldherr, Spectacle. On the Roman
republic generally, see Fergus Millar, The Crowd in Rome inthe Late
Republic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
48. On the influence of dramatic elements in Roman
historiography, see F.W.A. Walbank,History and Tragedy, Historia 9
(1960): 216-34; Dirk Pauw, The Dramatic Elements inLivys
History,ActaClassica 34 (1991): 33-49; T. P. Wiseman, The Origins
of Roman Histori-ography, Historiography and Imagination: Eight
Essays on Roman Culture (Exeter, UK: Uni-versity of Exeter Press,
1994), 1-22; Walsh,Livy, 50-66, 178-79; Walsh, Livy, 130-32;
Ogilvie,Commentary, 17-22, 219; and Erich Burck, Die Erzhlungskunst
des T. Livius (Berlin, Ger-many: Weidmannsche, 1964), 176-95. Some
caution is necessary in drawing comparisonsbetween Roman
historiography and theater. Historians such as Polybius and Livy
distinguishbetween the historians and playwrights craft (see Livy,
Ab Urbe Condita, Praef. 6; 5.21, 9;Polybius, Histories, 2.56-63;
and Feldherr, Spectacle, chap. 5). Moreover, often lacking is
dra-matic versimilitude, in which careful attention is paid to the
unique details of a situation. Instead,we often see employed
something like a type-scene, to borrow a phrase from oral poetry,
inwhich events take place in a narrow range of highly regularized
settings, private house (domus),battlefield, senate house (curia),
forum, assembly space (comitium) (Feldherr, Spectacle,165-69). See
also Andrew Walker, Enargeia and the Spectator in Greek
Historiography,Trans-actions of the American Philological
Association 123 (1993): 367; and Burck,Erzhlungskunst,197).
49. Villa, Politics, 134.50. Arendt, Tradition, 26.51. See also
Curtis, who suggests that Arendts very unique contribution to the
possible
source of authority in our times was telling a tale that brings
before us the beauty of thefounders beginning (Curtis, Our Sense,
106).
52. Lisa Disch,Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 1994), 37.
53. Ibid.54. Ibid.55. Ibid., 37-38.56. On the Roman source for
principles, see Arendt,OnRevolution, 212-13. Scholars have
rarely noted the Roman origins of principles. They have looked
(quite sensibly) toMontesquieu (Canovan, Hannah Arendt, 171-75;
Kateb, Hannah Arendt, 12), who got the ideafrom the Romans, to
possible existential connections (Lewis Hinchman and Sandra
Hinchman,Existentialism Politicized: Arendts Debt to Jaspers,
Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays, ed.Hinchman and Hinchman [Albany,
NY: SUNY, 1994], 161-62), or have attributed no genealogy(Dana
Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political [Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1996], 281, n. 118;
Villa,Politics, 140; Disch,Hannah Arendt, 37-38; and
Gottsegen,Political Thought, 33-35). Exception: Bowen-Moore, Hannah
Arendts Philosophy, 27-28.
57. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler
(London: William Heinemann, 1920),8.3, 62.
58. Cicero, De Re Publica, 5.1, 2.59. See
Cicero,TusculanDisputations, trans. J. E. King (London: Heinemann,
1966), 3.3, 6.60. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 3.3, 6.61. Cicero,
De Re Publica, 6.12.62. Ibid., 6.13.63. Arendt, Life of the Mind,
1:159; and Cicero, De Re Publica, 6.13.64. Cicero, De Re Publica,
6.15, 16.65. Ibid., 6.20.
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66. See especially Cicero,DeRePublica, 6.29. We might be
surprised that Arendt associatesthis form of thinking with Cicero
rather than Plato. But Arendt sees Plato as addressing invis-ibles
that are present in the visible world (Life of the Mind, 151).
67. Cicero, De Re Publica, 6.29.68. Ibid. See also Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations, 1.14, 32.69. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations,
2.4, 13. Arendt cites this as Tusculan Disputations 1, 13
in The Crisis in Culture (296, n. 5). This incorrect citation is
likely due to a printing error at thetop of the page of her edition
of theTusculanDisputations, which incorrectly identifies that
pageas Disputations, I rather than Disputations, II.
70. The inclusion of the Romans in Arendts discussion of
attitudes toward nature and culturerevises significantly Canovans
suggestion that Arendt owes a great deal of her view of natureto
the ancient Greeks (Hannah Arendt, 107; see also Politics as
Culture: Hannah Arendt andthe Public Realm, Hannah Arendt: Critical
Essays, 179-210, where Canovan makes no men-tion of the Romans).
This association leads Canovan to attribute to Arendt a view of
nature asbarbaric (Hannah Arendt, 107), of humans as vulnerable
islands threatened by the ragingtides of nature (HannahArendt, 13),
and of our attitude toward nature as one of wrenching sub-stances
from their natural context, dominating and destroying, and
asserting ourselves aslord of creation (Political Thought, 56). In
invoking the Romans, though, Arendt suggests anattitude toward
cultivating nature (and, in turn, toward culture) that is quite
different from that ofthe Greeks. In his discussion of nature and
earth, Macauley positions Arendts argument againstthe Greeks, Marx,
Heidegger, and the Frankfurt School and mentions Arendts discussion
of theRomans in only one paragraph later in the essay (Hannah
Arendt, 105, 116-17). For a moreextended discussion of Arendts
concept of nature, see Kerry Whiteside, Worldliness andRespect for
Nature: An Ecological Application of Hannah Arendts Conception of
Culture,Environmental Values 7 (1998): 25-40.
71. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 5.3, 9. See Arendt, Crisis in
Culture, 219.72. McClure, Odor, 70-71.73. Ibid., 71.74. Hannah
Arendt,TheOrigins of Totalitarianism, 2d ed. (Cleveland, OH:
Meridian Books,
1958), 322, 338.75. Hannah Arendt, Hermann Broch: 1886-1951,Men
inDark Times (New York: Harvest,
1968), 119 (hereafter, HB).76. Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin:
1892-1940, Men in Dark Times, 166.77. Arendt, Walter Benjamin,
203-6.78. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Praef. 10.79. Hannah Arendt,
Preface, Men in Dark Times, ix.80. Arendt, Preface, ix.81.
Montesquieu, Discourse on Cicero, trans. William Ebenstein,
Ebenstein, Political
Thought in Perspective (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957), 89-90.
Dean Hammer is an associate professor in the Department of
Government at Franklinand Marshall College ([email protected]). He
has published in a variety of jour-nals in political theory,
philosophy, and classics. His book,The Iliad as Politics: The
Per-formance of Political Thought, is forthcoming fromTheUniversity
ofOklahomaPress.
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