The “Abuser — Victim” Frame as a Consequence of the Rejection of Love: The Case of Hannah Arendt

Abstract

The article is an attempt to identify the basic models of Hannah Arendt’s thinking, which can be described either as a binary structure (where relations between sub- jects are reduced to stable binary models of “abuser — victim,” “good — evil,” “mas- ter — property”) or as a ternary structure based on the free communication of subjects. An analysis, including a philological and psychological perspective, of her major works is produced: Shadows, The Concept of Love in Augustine, Rachel Farn- hagen, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Human Condition, On Revolution, Life of the Mind, as well as various papers and private letters. The author tries to show that the formation of these structures and the transition from one to the other is deter- mined by Arendt’s relationship with Martin Heidegger, her significant Other, by the ruptures and renewals of the relationship with him. The binary optics is formed in Arendt’s very first texts created in the process of parting with Heidegger in the 1920s, and it finds its ultimate embodiment in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Conversely, in the periods when Arendt’s love and open conversation with Heidegger is realized, her thought comes to a system that assumes a place for a Third, be it a third opinion or a third participant(s) in the relationship. Arendt sees the example of such a system of communication of equal politi- cal subjects in the democracy of the polis (in Human Condition). The transition from binary oppositions like “abuser — victim” to a communicative (ternary) model became possible thanks to the experience of reconciliation with Heidegger in 1950, and the three-way communication with his wife, just as the transition to more dis- tanced forms of communication with him in the 1960s led to a return to binary models in Arendt’s later work. At the end of the article, a suggestion is made as to why Arendt’s thought has been in such demand in recent decades: the binary struc- ture of the perception of social relations, which distinguishes most of Arendt’s works, turned out to be consonant with the culture at the turn of the 21st century (a view of morality, history and politics, relations with the state, relations between man and woman, parent and child through the prism of “abuser — victim,” “the side of good versus the side of evil,” etc.). A polarized picture of the world has taken root in soci- ety, probably for the same reasons as in Arendt’s case, i.e., as a result of the sys- tematic divorces, ruptures from relationships with the meaningful Other that are peculiar to our epoch.