![]() ![]() Well-functioning polities invest in public goods, like walls and laws, in order to enable political action. This is why Arendt suggests in The Human Condition that lawmaking, like wall-building, is properly a pre-political activity: “before men began to act, a definite space had to be secured and a structure built where all subsequent actions could take place … the laws, like the wall around the city, were not results of action but products of making” ( HC 194). They thus delimit the stage within which actors can act. ![]() I go on to clarify how ideology relates to terror and finally compare ideology to the concept of action as developed in The Human Condition (1958).Īccording to Arendt, laws are like city walls: they establish the pre-conditions for exercising political freedom. Towards this end, I begin by outlining how totalitarianism differs from tyranny, according to Arendt. ![]() ![]() To understand just how ideology substitutes for action, we must understand how totalitarianism emerges historically as a novel form of government. These principles take the place of genuine political action, which is the key characteristic of any well-functioning polity. These regimes, Arendt says, are characterized by ideology and terror. Hannah Arendt develops her theory of ideology from her analysis of historically existing totalitarian regimes, namely those of Hitler and Stalin, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). ![]()
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