Within the heart’s darkness: The role of emotions in Arendt’s political thought
| Author | Dan Degerman |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885116647850 |
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(2) 153–173
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885116647850
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Article
Within the heart’s darkness:
The role of emotions in
Arendt’s political thought
Dan Degerman
Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion,
Lancaster University, UK
Abstract
Interest in the political relevance of the emotions is growing rapidly. In light of this,
Hannah Arendt’s claim that the emotions are apolitical has come under renewed fire.
But many critics have misunderstood her views on the relationship between individuals,
emotions and the political. This paper addresses this issue by reconstructing the con-
ceptual framework through which Arendt understands the emotions. Arendt often
describes the heart – where the emotions reside – as a place of darkness. I begin by
tracing this metaphor through her work to demonstrate that it is meant to convey the
inherently uncertain nature of emotions rather than a devaluation of them. I proceed to
challenge the notion that Arendt adopts the Enlightenment dichotomy between reason
and emotion. In fact, she rejects both as a basis for politics. However, she does identify
some constructive roles for the emotions. I argue that fear is intrinsically connected to
courage – the principal political virtue – in Arendt’s philosophy. In light of my discussion,
I then reinterpret the role of compassion and pity in On Revolution, concluding that
Arendt’s insights can help us avoid the potential pitfalls of the contemporary project to
recuperate the emotions in politics.
Keywords
Hannah Arendt, emotions, political agency, pity, courage, compassion
Introduction
There is an ongoing revolution against the sovereignty of reason in politics, and the
emotions are at the barricades. The idea of reason, which Enlightenment thinkers
celebrated as the supreme human faculty, has in the minds of many been tainted by
Corresponding author:
Dan Degerman, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University, County South,
Lancaster LA1 4YL, UK.
Email: d.degerman@lancaster.ac.uk
its history of service to imperialists, chauvinists, and elitists (e.g. Foucault, 1982;
Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972). Contemporary political philosophers have taken
this opportunity to (re)assert the political relevance of the emotions (Ferry and
Kingston, 2008). For example, Martha Nussbaum (2013) has argued that liberal
democracies should prioritise the cultivation of certain emotions, such as love.
With the growing popularity of such projects, Hannah Arendt’s claim that the
emotions are apolitical has, again, become a target of criticism. However, many
critics have misunderstood the premise of Arendt’s claim and drawn mistaken
conclusions about her views on the relationship between individuals, emotions,
and the political.
The confusion seems due in part to the tendency to select a narrow range of
Arendt’s oeuvre as the basis for interpretations of her views on emotions. The work
that has received the most attention is On Revolution (Arendt, 2006 [1965]),
in which Arendt appears to blame compassion and pity for the French
Revolution’s failure to establish a foundation for political liberty, and for the
reign of terror that ensued. Among the most notable opponents of her analysis
is George Kateb (1984), whose criticism continues to influence contemporary
interpretations. More recently, commentators have found the basis for divergent
analyses in Arendt’s other works. Drawing primarily on Men in Dark Times
(Arendt, 1995 [1968c]), Deborah Nelson (2006) has suggested that Arendt
celebrates heartlessness because she believes painful experiences can bring us
closer to reality. Volker Heins (2007) has argued to the contrary that The
Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt, 1979) shows that Arendt considers heart-
lessness a political pathology. None of these commentators appear to have exam-
ined The Life of the Mind (Arendt, 1978) in which Arendt offers her most detailed
and systematic treatment of the emotions. Some of Arendt’s lectures and
essays elaborating her views on the emotions have also been overlooked. In this
paper, I draw upon a broad range of Arendt’s works to reconstruct the con-
ceptual framework through which she understood the emotions and their relation-
ship to politics. I contend that, although Arendt is deeply concerned about the
dangers of using shared emotion as the foundation for political action, she sees
a constructive role for the emotions in the development of individual political
agency.
Arendt often describes the heart – where the emotions reside – as a place of
darkness. I begin by tracing this metaphor through her work to demonstrate that it
is meant to convey the inherently uncertain nature of emotions rather than a
devaluation of them; I show how this understanding is related to Arendt’s phe-
nomenology of the inner life of humans. I proceed to challenge the notion that
Arendt adopts the Enlightenment dichotomy between reason and emotion. In fact,
she rejects both as a basis for politics. However, she does identify some constructive
roles for the emotions. Fear, for instance, is intrinsically connected to courage – the
principal political virtue – in Arendt’s philosophy. In light of this, I reinterpret the
role of compassion and pity in On Revolution, concluding that Arendt’s insights can
help us to avoid potential pitfalls in the project to recuperate the emotions in
politics today.
154 European Journal of Political Theory 18(2)
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