Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:56:24.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A DEMOCRATIC CONSENSUS? ISAIAH BERLIN, HANNAH ARENDT, AND THE ANTI-TOTALITARIAN FAMILY QUARREL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2018

Kei Hiruta
Get access

Abstract

Amid the ongoing political turmoil, symbolized by the recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, books and articles abound today to encourage us to re-read anti-totalitarian classics ‘for our times’. But what do we find in this body of work originally written in response to Nazism and Stalinism? Do we find a democratic consensus forged by a shared anti-totalitarian commitment? I doubt it. Considering the cases of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt, this article highlights discord beneath what may today appear like a post-war democratic consensus. I argue that the anti-totalitarian literature of the last century encompassed multiple political philosophies, which sometimes differed irreconcilably from each other.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 17 , Issue 48 , Spring 2018 , pp. 25 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Hamilton, Nigel, ‘From FDR to Donald Trump – the Decline of the American Empire’, The New Statesman (4 September 2017)Google Scholar, <http://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2017/09/fdr-donald-trump-decline-american-empire>.

2 Andreas Preuss and Joe Sutton, ‘Swastika Scrawlings Unnerve Three US Cities’, CNN (5 February 2017), <http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/05/us/chicago-houston-new-york-swastika-vandalism/index.html>; Adam Lusher, ‘Racism Unleashed: True Extent of the ‘Explosion of Blatant Hate’ That Followed Brexit Result Revealed’, The Independent (28 July 2016), <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-racism-uk-post-referendum-racism-hate-crime-eu-referendum-racism-unleashed-poland-racist-a7160786.html>.

3 Isaiah Berlin and Bryan Magee, ‘Nationalism: The Melting-pot Myth’, in Henry Hardy (ed.) The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library (2006), <http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/nachlass/bigidea.pdf>, p. 3.

4 Berlin, and Lukes, , ‘Isaiah Berlin in Conversation with Steven Lukes’, Salmagundi 120 (1998): 52–134 Google Scholar, at p. 121.

5 Berlin, Isaiah, The Power of Ideas, ed. Hardy, Henry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 196Google Scholar.

6 For further discussion see Hiruta, Kei, ‘An “Anti-Utopian Age?”: Isaiah Berlin's England, Hannah Arendt's America, and Utopian Thinking in Dark Times’, Journal of Political Ideologies 22(1) (2017): 12–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Arendt, Hannah, ‘Nation-State and Democracy’, Arendt Studies 1 (2017): 7–12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 12.

8 Arendt, Hannah, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 163Google Scholar.

9 Arendt, Hannah, Crises of the Republic (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1972), 232–3Google Scholar.

10 Arendt, Hannah and Benedict, Hans Jürgen, ‘Revolution, Violence, and Power: A Correspondence’, Constellations 16(2) (2009): 302–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 305.

11 Arendt, Crises of the Republic, p. 245.