Kevin Zhao

Professor Warren
Political Theory

Arendt - The Public and the Private Realm

Chapter two of Arendts book begins with an examination of the essence

of man. As Arendt points out, man is above all a social being whose action is seen

and heard outside his home in the public sphere. Arendt refers to both Aristotle

and Aquinas to show that our human nature is political and social. The Greeks

denote the public realm as the polis or the city where men engage in political and

social activities. Arendt comments, to be political, to live in a polis, meant that

everything was decided through words and persuasion and not through force

and violence (26). On the other hand, a man who only lives a private life is

thought to be slaves and barbarians who was not fully human and lived outside

the polis. Because of the huge emphasis that ancient Greek society places on the

political realm, it also draws a sharp distinction between the political and private

life of the citizens. As Arendt elucidates, the Greeks consider domestic or the

private life to be secondary to the public life, which Aristotle thought consists of

action and speech. These two qualities are thought to reflect the highest of

human capacity and excellence. For the Greek society, what happens in the

private sphere should be excluded from the glorious deeds of the pubic sphere

and hidden from the public view, since activities of the private sphere are

primarily related to the crude maintenance of the human biological process and

are therefore considered as the sphere of necessity. For the Greeks, it is in the
public realm where men become truly free, conscious human beings and capable

of striving for action and excellence that will outlast human mortality.

As Arendt argues, the growing influence and importance of private realm

began in the medieval period where the church offered a substitute for an

individuals political citizenship, which in the earlier Greek society was thought

to be irreplaceable. One of the turning points in the understanding of public

realm is according to Arendt, the medieval concept of the common good, which

diverges sharply from the Greek definition of a political realm and instead refers

to the common material and spiritual interests of the private individuals. Then as

we progress toward modern society, private realm begins to fully enter into

public realm and threatens to completely take over it. Arendt observes that

there appears to be an increasing enrichment of the private sphere through

individualism, which reduces the need for the public realm.

The rise of mass society requires that all individuals behave according to

a common pattern as the public realm where individuals used to compete for

distinction and prominence has disappeared. As Arendt insightfully observes, the

rise of modern economics has certainly helped to intensify this leveling effect of

mass society, as individuals are only defined as buyers and sellers on the market

trying to maximize gain. Here, Arendt draws a parallel between the conformism

of modern mass society and the socialization of man in the Marxian communist

utopia. Although Marx was right in denouncing the dehumanizing aspect of

capitalist society that turns every individual into a wage labourer, he presents a

rather unconvincing image of the future of an administered society where

individuals are freed from economic necessity but seem to be quite a distance

away from the real realm of freedom where they participate in political activities
and realize their human essence. While Arendt clearly shows a profound sense of

nostalgia for the loss of the Greek ideal of public realm, she gives a compelling

diagnosis of the potential negative consequences of a society where the state

withers away. Clearly, she is unsatisfied with both the one-dimensional

capitalist society that reduces each individual to a common denominator of

money and the Marxist communist utopia where the fulfillment of basic needs

does not automatically result in the pursuit of higher goals in life; she places her

priority on the fulfillment of higher human capacity, namely action and speech in

the political sphere. As she rightly argues, for the Polis was for the Greeks, as

the res publica was for the Romans, first of all their guarantee against the futility

of individual life, the space protected against this futility and reserved for the

relative permanence, if not immortality, of mortals (56). The transient nature of

human life demands that we seek out a place of permanence where our fleeting

achievements can be recorded and stored in the annals of history. And this place

of permanence is much more than the emancipation of man from the realm of

necessity that Marx has promised; it requires strenuous determination and effort

to prove with ones own action and words that human life is worth living.

Perhaps the emerging field of participatory democracy offers some of the

possible hope for restoring the Greek ideal of public sphere and for the

realization of the essence of being human.