1979/11/01 by Martin Levin, Martin A. Levin
Social Sciences · #Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1177/009059177900700406
openalex publication_date 1979/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
L2 VERY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHER is subject to misunderstanding, but perhaps none more so than those who insist on distinctions to which their age is not accustomed or which it is determined to ignore. Thus it is not surprising to discover that Hannah Arendt, whose philosophy is based on just such distinctions which we find either alien or meaningless, should be particularly vulnerable to misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Two recent issues of Political Theory have included articles which have contained critical but thoughtful appreciations of Arendt's celebration of the political.' However, the authors of these articles, George Kateb and Margaret Canovan, have found quite troubling the counterpart of Arendt's glorification of the political: her denigration of all nonpolitical activities, and in particular laboring as personified in Arendt's animal laborans.2 Indeed, Kateb finds Arendt's indictment of labor so relentless and so complete that he feels compelled to defend her against the possible charge of austocratic fastidiousness.3 Canovan believes no defense is possible and finds Arendt guilty of demonstrating a haughty and distant contempt for the vulgarity of the modern world.4 I believe both Kateb and Canovan are wrong in discerning elitist tendencies in Arendt, at least to the extent they base their conviction on Arendt's alleged harsh strictures against the laboring class. They make that mistake because both of them too easily assume that Arendt's devaluation of labor and her indictment of animal laborans refer to a social category of humanity that was formerly described as the lower orders and today is