The Origins of Hannah Arendt's Council System
2015, History of Political Thought
42 Pages
1 File ▾
This article reconsiders Arendt’s frequently ignored proposal of a federal council system. While Arendt’s references to a council system are usually dismissed as utopian, I re-examine Arendt’s political writings in order to demonstrate the centrality of the councils to her thought. The development of the council system is traced back to two primary sources: a council communist tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Arendt’s husband, Heinrich Blücher, and Arendt’s Jewish writings of the 1930s and 1940s. The analysis reveals that Arendt’s republicanism undertakes an anarcho-communist inflection, which has not yet been fully appreciated.
The Centrality of the Council System in Arendt's Political Thought.docx
2019, Arendt on Freedom, Liberation and Revolution
22 Pages
2 Files ▾
In this chapter, I seek to show that the vision of radical, participatory democracy plays a much more important role in Arendt’s political thought than commentators usually allow. I begin by discussing the way federalist arrangements Arendt advocated in different contexts were meant to be complemented by a citizen council system, and reinterpret her call for new political structures that would guarantee human dignity in this light. I then turn to demonstrate the close links between Arendt’s conception of “the political” and her support for the council system. Finally, I suggest that Arendt’s discussions on the relations between philosophy, politics and judgment reflect her urgent sense of the need for participatory democracy. Arendt, I conclude, provides powerful normative foundations for the theory of participatory democracy.
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