Incompleteness: Remarks on Arendt Method

Abstract

Hannah Arendt is commonly criticized for defining action as an end in itself, of horizontal power and of councils as an alternative to representative democracy that is unrealistic and unrealizable. In contrast, I show how much Arendt was concerned about the dangers of these concepts: the replacement of action by fabrication, of power by domination and violence, and the impossibility of a council democracy in the face of a highly administrative and depoliticized society. Arendt shows how these hybrid forms revealed their pure forms as a hidden tradition in revolutionary situations. The supposed incompleteness and failure of a struggle for another society can therefore be understood as a recurring possibility and reality and thus as a specific condition of the political. The critique of the hybrid form also includes the critique of modern scientific thought and political thought.