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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2018

Kei Hiruta
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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.

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

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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.