Arendt argued that political thought and discourse have traditionally been misconceived by philosophers, who have typically measured them against philosophical standards, and so conceived them as crude or defective forms of philosophy. This chapter explains how she reconceived the main faculties of political thought (opinion, judgment, imagination), the central forms of political thought (narrative thought, exemplary thought, and what she called “representative thought”), and the central mode of political discourse (persuasion). She saw political thought and discourse as primarily non-theoretical, in contrast to the theoretical forms of thought and discourse central to philosophy. Her project was to rethink these non-theoretical forms of thought and discourse in light of their powers in the realm of politics, rather than in light of their weakness in the realm of philosophy. This distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical thought and discourse sets up the question of the next chapter: How did the political theories of classical philosophers distort or obscure the non-theoretical understanding of politics implicit in Greek literature and history?

The first chapter, following the path of Arendt’s work throughout her life, shows how her questions arose from her own experiences, and how her thinking responded to events that eluded or exceeded traditional forms of thought. It argues that the question of the political was an implicit but central concern in all of her writing. Totalitarianism was essentially an anti-political form of government, in her view, which had to be opposed in part through an affirmation of political life. But such an affirmation was difficult, Arendt thought, because Western philosophy had never had a pure concept of the political. So an overarching aim of her thought was to work out a new approach to political theory, an approach that would let her see politics “with eyes unclouded by philosophy.”

The last chapter lays out Arendt’s interpretation of the American Revolution and her reading of the Declaration of Independence. She argued that--in the absence of established governments--the American colonists had to govern themselves, and the practical experience of self-government led them to non-theoretical but authentic insights into the nature of power and authority. But instead of rethinking traditional theoretical concepts in light of their experiences, they misconceived their experiences by forcing them into the framework of traditional theoretical concepts. So there was a tension between the implicit insights and the explicit theories of the colonists, Arendt argued: “the old understanding of power and authority...led the new experience of power to be channeled into concepts which had just been vacated.” This tension between implicit insight and explicit theory runs through the Declaration of Independence. Arendt’s reading goes beyond Jefferson’s explicit claims in order to bring to light a non-theoretical but authentic understanding of political power and authority implicit in the text of the Declaration.

The fifth chapter lays out Arendt’s critical dismantling of classical political philosophy. Socrates understood the dialogical and aporetic nature of essential thought, she argued, and Socratic thought is compatible with the openness and endlessness of political persuasion.By contrast, Plato aimed to replace political persuasion with government by philosopher-kings, whose knowledge entitled them to rule over citizens, as the expertise of master craftsmen entitled them to give orders to subordinates.But this aim led Plato both to misunderstand the realities of political life and to misconceive the nature of political theory.Aristotle also derived some of his basic terms from the sphere of production, Arendt argued, so that his metaphysical concepts led him to conceive the political philosopher on the model of a craftsman, the polis on the model of a product, and political action on the model of making. The chapter then traces Arendt’s genealogies of the concepts of freedom, authority, law, and principle in classical philosophy. This account of classical political theory leads to the question of the next chapter: How did Arendt rethink the basic realities of politics?

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?

The Introduction sets out the questions at stake in the book. It argues that while practical political life is always guided by a pretheoretical understanding of politics, among theorists today there is no common agreement on the question of what politics actually is. The most illuminating response to this question has come from Hannah Arendt, but to fully grasp her response we have to do two things: to make explicit the understanding of politics implicit in her work; and to follow the way of thought by which she reached this understanding.

The Conclusion briefly ties together the various strands of Arendt's arguments, and discusses the relevance of Arendt's thought to American politics today.

The third chapter follows Arendt’s approach to the question of the political. She argued that theories of politics have been led astray by several prejudices: that politics is a universal part of human life; that politics is a means to nonpolitical ends; that rule is essential to politics; and that politics is ultimately a struggle for power. In her view, these prejudices distort our view of politics by abstracting the word from the history of the classical polis, which was the origin of the word “politics” and the prime example of a political community. Arendt worked out her concept of the political by retrieving and conceptualizing the nontheoretical understanding of politics implicit in classical literature and history. She argued that the polis excluded relations of rule between citizens; citizens ruled over those excluded from politics (women, children, slaves, foreigners), but that full citizens themselves were not divided into rulers and ruled. Politics, in her view, is a way of being together, based on principles of equality and nonviolence, in which people decide what to do and how to live together through open debate and common deliberation on matters of public concern.

The second chapter lays out Arendt's way of thinking. She appropriated the methods of existential phenomenology she learned from Martin Heidegger, but she used them to work out a distinctly non-Heideggerian concept of the political. In her view, political philosophers had been guided and misguided by the metaphysical assumptions implicit in their most basic questions. Her aim was to “critically dismantle” these metaphysical assumptions in order to grasp and bring to light what had been overlooked or distorted by traditional political philosophy. This chapter lays out the three tasks of thought proper to existential phenomenology – “Destruktion,” “Reduktion,” and “Konstruktion” – and shows how Arendt worked through each task in her critical dismantling of traditional concepts of rule.