Beyond Good and Evil

Abstract

UNTIL RECENTLY, HANNAH ARENDT'S THEORY of political action has been colonized almost exclusively by champions of a dialogical, consensus-based model of politics. Habermas provides perhaps the best example of a consensus reading of Arendt, a reading which stresses her distinction between action and speech, on one hand, and work, labor, and instrumentality, on the other. For Habermas and many others, Arendt's theory of action starkly underlines the difference between a politics of dialogue, persuasion, and agreement and a politics of interests, strategy, and efficiency.1 Arendt's primary contribution to political theory, it is claimed, is her rescue of the intersubjective essence of political action action as together, acting in concert from the oblivion threatened by the technocratic usurpation of the practical.2 The belated reception of Arendt's work in France has begun to call this reading into question. The influence of Arendt on such theorists as Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jean-Francois Lyotard (to name but a few) is unmistakable. Their work has helped draw attention to a less dialogue-centered Arendt. For example, Lyotard's work on the gap between political and cognitive judgment refers us to the pagan Arendt, the Arendt who is highly skeptical of a rationalized, theory-derivative politics.3 His polemical critique of consensus-oriented politics (in The Postmodern Con-