‘The Most Totalitarian Society Yet Realized’ : Freedom and Spontaneity in Hannah Arendt

• In Event: Strauss, Arendt, Churchill, and Liberalism

Abstract

Much harm has been done by the concept of freedom being squared away to the realm of the economic. As freedom becomes a property of the market, where one’s desires and choices are expressed only in terms of choosing “freely” between different economic options, we struggle to think of other ways in which the idea of freedom can illuminate our existence outside the market. With this goal in mind, this paper attempts to revisit Hannah Arendt’s writings on the concept of freedom, especially as it relates to the notion of spontaneity which I argue, gives us a distinctive entry point into the vitalist aspects of her theory of freedom and action.
Arendt’s concern for spontaneity is valuable because it brings the question of freedom to its granular, or even an instinctive level, where spontaneity is not the other of habit, custom, or law, nor even the human unconscious, but an extension of thought. Since freedom requires the response of spontaneity, it is not something that exists or operates prior to the contemplative faculty but only through and because of it. As she writes in “The Jew as Pariah,” “thinking is the new weapon—the only one with which, in Kafka’s opinion, the pariah is endowed at birth in his vital struggle against society.” Thus, even though thinking is “endowed at birth”, it is nonetheless something that is honed, sharpened, and trained to reach its utmost capacity through its exercise for which spontaneity becomes an important precondition.

Author

• Antaripa Bharali, The Graduate Center, CUNY