The sixth chapter shows how Arendt rethought some basic concepts of political theory: power; strength; force; authority; violence; government; contract; law; and freedom. She held that these phenomena have been distorted by the assumption--a legacy of Plato and Aristotle--that rule is essential to politics, and she argued that we have to suspend this assumption in order to see these phenomena clearly: “It is only after one ceases to reduce public affairs to the business of dominion that the original data in the realm of human affairs will appear, or, rather, reappear, in their authentic diversity.” In particular, Arendt claimed that power as it has been traditionally conceived (power-over-others) depends on a more basic level of power (the power-to-act of a group). She also argued that political authority need not come from an extra-political source (divine revelation or self-evident truth) but may be derived from the principles that govern political action. This chapter sets up the central questions of the book’s last chapter: How did Arendt’s study of the American Revolution inform her work in political theory, and how did her theoretical work illuminate the American Revolution?