Société québécoise de science politique

Concepts of Solidarity in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt

Author(s): Ken Reshaur
Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol.
25, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 723-736
Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science
politique
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 Concepts of Solidarity in the Political Theory
of Hannah Arendt*

KEN RESHAUR University of Manitoba

It has become fashionable of late to see in many different kinds of joint

endeavour instances of solidarity. Insofar as we restrict the meaning of
solidarity to interdependence and reciprocity-between individuals,
groups or states-this comes as no surprise: such relationships have
always existed, varying only in scope and intensity. Solidarity, however,
is not merely a descriptive term; it evokes a positive appraisal. We say
that we feel solidarity, that we show solidarity, and that we have a sense
of solidarity. It is this combination of the prescriptive with the descrip-
tive which gives rise to a nagging doubt: has the concept of solidarity
become so eclectic and elastic that it can accommodate the rhetoric of
any person or group?
Hannah Arendt, an exceptionally perceptive analyst of things polit-
ical, is constantly alert to the subversion of principle that can be caused
by appeals to passion and sentiment. In her work we find concepts of
solidarity which, with one exception, are able to reconcile the claims of
emotional force and intellectual coherence. She takes into account the
concerns of the oppressed without compromising her commitment to
abstract intellectual values and ideas. This determination to keep dis-
tinct the contributions of emotion and cognition results in an
impressive-though largely implicit-account of four ways in which
solidarity may be conceptualized.
In a seldom cited commentary, Arendt considers whether it makes
sense to say that one can experience feelings vicariously. She concludes
that it is impossible, except in a metaphorical sense which, taken liter-
* I would like to thank Shiraz Dossa, from whom I borrowed the exclusive-inclusive
terminology, Phil Hansen and Paul Vogt for their comments on an earlier version of
this essay. I gratefully acknowledge the suggestions of the anonymous JOURNAL
referees. Financial support from the Office of the Dean of Arts, University of Mani-
toba, was very helpful.

Ken Reshaur, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Mani-

toba R3T 2N2

Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, XXV: 4 (December/
decembre 1992). Printed in Canada / Imprime au Canada

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724 KEN RESHAUR

ally, develops into "a phony sentimentality in which all real issues are
obscured."1 Moreover, she claims that solidarity is a necessary condi-
tion for emotions such as compassion in the face of suffering, the proviso
being that one remain aware that it is someone else who suffers. It is
instructive, therefore, to consider what she says in On Revolution.
There are two passages in this study which together contain virtually all
of her analytical comments on solidarity and in which is to be found,
again, a sharp demarcation between the affective and the cognitive
capacities of humankind. In the first passage she claims that the alterna-
tive to pity-conceived here as the perversion of compassion-is sol-
idarity.

It is through solidarity that people establish deliberately and, as it were, dispas-

sionately a community of interest with the oppressed and exploited. The com-
mon interest would then be "the grandeur of man" or "the honour of the human
race" or the dignity of man. For solidarity, because it partakes of reason, and
hence of generality, is able to comprehend a multitude conceptually, not only the
multitude of a class or a nation or a people, but eventually all mankind. But this
solidarity, though it may be aroused by suffering, is not guided by it, and it
comprehends the strong and the rich no less than the weak and the poor;
compared with the sentiment of pity, it may appear cold and abstract, for it
remains committed to "ideas"-to greatness, or honour, or dignity-rather than
to any "love" of men.... Terminologically speaking, solidarity is a principle
that can inspire and guide action.2

In the second passage Arendt writes: "The political trouble which

misery of the people holds in store is that manyness can in fact assume
the guise of oneness, that suffering indeed breeds moods and emotions
and attitudes that resemble solidarity to the point of confusion."3
What Arendt wants to make clear when she writes about solidarity
is how essential it is to the integrity of this principle for there to be a
world which mediates the concern of one with the suffering of another. If
solidarity is a precondition for the existence of compassion, it is because
solidarity is world-building. It provides a means by which a relationship
can be established between people who suffer and people who decide to
remove or at least ameliorate this suffering, by establishing a community
of interest with the oppressed. The world, by relating at the cost of
separating, is what enables concern and compassion rather than pity to
be the feeling one experiences as a solidary. This distinction between self
and world is at the centre of Arendt's thought.
Arendt's writings contain four concepts of solidarity.4 One is a
solidarity which has its basis in the experience of a coincidence of
I Hannah Arendt, "Collective Responsibility," in James W. Bernauer, ed., Amor
Mundi: Explorations in the Faith and Thought of Hannah Arendt (Boston: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1987), 43.
2 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1963), 84.
3 Ibid., 90.
4 The history of solidarity involves two Latin derivatives: salvus, which means safe;

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Abstract. This article has two objectives: one is to distinguish and explicate four con-
cepts of solidarity which are found in the writings of Hannah Arendt; the other is to show
how Arendt's respect for facts and suspicion of sentiment publicly displayed are justified.
The first concept of solidarity is exclusive solidarity. It is limited to those who are suffering
from exploitation or oppression. The second conception of solidarity is inclusive: it
includes those who suffer but can also accommodate those who make common cause with
them. This is the only kind of solidarity that Arendt specifically analyzes. A third concept
of solidarity is universal: its proximate constituent parts are the different "peoples" who
collectively make up humankind. Finally, there is natural solidarity. This variety of
solidarity, the author argues, is conceptually inadequate and confused. In the development
and articulation of each of these four concepts, some attention is given to the relative
contributions of emotion and cognition in determining one's understanding of solidarity.

Resume. Le present article vise deux buts: le premier est de distinguer et d'expliquer
quatre concepts de la solidarit6 qui se trouvent mentionn6s dans les 6crits de Hannah
Arendt, alors que le deuxieme est d'illustrer comment le respect que d6montre Arendt
pour les faits, tout comme sa m6fiance h l'6gard de la manifestation publique des senti-
ments, sontjustifies. Le premier concept de la solidarit6 est la solidarit6 exclusive: celle-ci
est limit6e aux victimes d'exploitation ou d'oppression. Le deuxieme concept est la
solidarit6 inclusive: celle-ci englobe non seulement les victimes, mais aussi ceux et celles
qui font cause commune avec elles. Il s'agit ici du seul concept de la solidarit6 qu'elabore
Arendt de fagon precise. Le troisieme concept est la solidarit6 universelle: ses compo-
santes imm6diates sont les divers peuples qui constituent ensemble l'humanit6. Le qua-
trieme concept est la solidarit6 naturelle. L'auteur soutient que cette dernitre cat6gorie de
la solidarit6 est non seulement vague, mais aussi insuffisante du point de vue conceptuel.
En d6veloppant et en expliquant ces quatre concepts, les roles relatifs que jouent les
sentiments et la cognition dans l'l6aboration de la comprehension de la solidarit6 sont
consideres aussi.

aspirations and interests (a community of interest). This coincidence is

an objective phenomenon of which individuals become aware when
their status, normal expectations or way of life are compromised,
threatened or thrown into bold relief by their perception that it is
alterable for the better. What they share is a commonness of situation or
circumstance; their solidarity consists in the generation and pursuit of a
common response designed to remove or ameliorate the conditions
which place them at risk. Their aim is to achieve justice and be accorded
respect. I shall call this "exclusive solidarity" since it is an act of
self-help, restricted to those who suffer in the same objective fashion. A
second kind of solidarity is inclusive: it comprehends those who suffer
and those who seek to make common cause with them even though they
do not find themselves in the same objective, factual circumstances. A
third variety of solidarity is universal solidarity: it is a fundamental and
unavoidable articulation of the plurality of peoples distinctive of human-
kind. This type is sometimes described by Arendt as pre-political since it
has to do with the "givenness" of identity in a national sense.5 However,
and sollus, which means entire. The term was used in ancient Rome to refer to the
practice, among the Roman gens, of co-proprietorship and collective financial
responsibility. Subsequent French usage emphasized the notion of a perfect union, or
a community of perfect coincidence, in terms of aspirations, sympathies and interests.
5 Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, ed. by Ron Feldman (New York: Grove Press,
1978), 246.

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726 KEN RESHAUR

I view it as clearly political since national identity usually has political as

well as cultural significance. A fourth type of solidarity is based on one's
"own kind"-what I shall call natural solidarity.
Solidarity is of minor importance in Arendt's thought so long as we
continue to construe her concept of political action solely in agonistic
terms. Recent scholarship, however, has shown that Hannah Arendt has
at least two conceptions of political action which appear to be in ten-
sion.6 The first, which permeates the argument of The Human Condi-
tion, exults in agonistic encounters between citizens. Her exemplar of
this is the Greek polis of antiquity. A second perspective, derived for the
most part from On Revolution and Crises of the Republic, emphasizes
the republican accent in Arendt's work and points out the importance
for her political theory of active, participatory citizenship. This empha-
sis, buttressed by the fact that references to solidarity are found through-
out her writings, shows that solidarity is a consideration of some signifi-
cance in her political thought.

Exclusive solidarity, anchored in oppression, may be precipitated by an

intensification of tyranny which results in the citizen realizing how
inured to suffering he has become. It may result from the efforts of a
charismatic personality to draw to the attention of the oppressed the
injustice of their plight. Or it may be the unanticipated outcome of an
isolated act. The dynamics of this kind of experience appear to be as
follows. The oppressed person puts up with the circumstances in which
he finds himself. He is alienated from the sense of himself as an initiator
of change. His awareness of oppression is not discrete but holistic; he
has become so habituated to assimilating his tacit awareness of self to his
oppressed self that, practically speaking, he is unable to use awareness
of the daily, routinized oppression built into his life as a cognitive lever
by means of which he can acquire a disengaged perspective. Should an
opportunity for change present itself, however, such a person may very
well become aware of the fetters of his situation and, with them as the
focus of his attention, attempt to remove them, replacing them with
conditions more likely to allow him to feel at home in the world.
This, I believe, is an account of the development of exclusive
solidarity which is both plausible and implicit in Arendt's account of
how the council form of government appeared during the short life of the
Hungarian Revolution in 1956. The councils, as had the Paris commune
6 See, for example, Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves, "Agency, Identity, and Culture:
Hannah Arendt's Conception of Citizenship," Praxis International 9 (1989), 2-24;
Jennifer Ring, "The Pariah as Hero: Hannah Arendt's Political Actor," Political
Theory 19 (1991), 433-52; and Seyla Benhabib, "Judgment and the Moral Foundations
of Politics in Arendt's Thought," Political Theory 16 (1988), 29-51.

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Solidarity in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt 727

before them, provided a space of appearance for action and the genera-
tion of power. There was a wide variety of bases for the councils that
sprang up; and they began to generate organizational ties, both horizon-
tal and vertical, building on networks of relationships between people
which, for the most part, constituted the practical ambience of their
lives. There were

neighbourhood councils that emerged in all residential districts, so-called revo-

lutionary councils that grew out of fighting together in the streets, councils of
writers and artists, born in the coffee houses of Budapest, students' and youth's
councils at the universities, workers' councils in the factories, councils in the
army, among the civil servants and so on.7

The councils were spaces for action where words did not conform to the
logic of an ideology or the constraints of party discipline. They incor-
porated the federalist principle, and because of their bottom-up repre-
sentational structure, their articulation at the base retained its integrity.8
Arendt's commentary on the council phenomenon includes men-
tion of two considerations of central importance to an adequate explic-
ation of exclusive solidarity: equality and authority. People in a relation-
ship of solidarity are, for the purposes of that relationship, equal, since
solidary action is concerted action and requires comparable, although
not identical, effort. Authority is similarly dispersed among the constitu-
ent actors in such a relationship since each person understands the
rationale of solidary action in terms of his own reading of a situation
common to all. This enables him to exercise the power which flows from
mutual dependence: an ongoing negotiation and renegotiation of the
terms, direction and goals of the solidarity grouping. This requires
substantial overlap of tacit awareness by each actor of the shared con-
text so that a coherent outcome is the result.
The structure of inclusive solidarity differs from exclusive solidarity
inasmuch as the experience of oppression is an experience available only
to the oppressed; it cannot be shared with those who choose deliberately
to establish a community of interest with them. By contrast, the particu-
lars of the situation which are sources of irritation, harrassment, pain
and alienation which the oppressed have become used to may be bla-
tantly obvious to those who make common cause with them. This is the
point and substance of Arendt's claim that solidarity may be aroused by
suffering but is established dispassionately. It is, indeed, impossible to
have vicarious feelings, but it is not at all difficult to make the judgment
that certain factual conditions involved in the objective situation of
another person or group constitute an affront to the dignity of human-
kind. The reaction of prospective solidaries, upon becoming aware of
subhuman conditions with which other people have to contend, may
7 Arendt, On Revolution, 270.
8 Ibid., 282.

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728 KEN RESHAUR

quite predictably be outrage. This emotion, however, comes after the

facts are known; it is completely contingent except as a motivating
factor for solidary action. The failure to distinguish between facts and
feelings does, as Arendt claims, account for the proclivity of some
people to mistake "to the point of confusion" moods and emotions for
solidarity.9
I want now to focus on an instance of inclusive solidarity mentioned
by Arendt; it occurred during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, when
the Germans demanded the right to deport stateless people. The major-
ity of persons in this category were German Jewish refugees who had
been deprived of their nationality and whom Denmark, in common with
other states, had refused to naturalize or grant permission to work.
However, while Denmark did not welcome the refugees, "the right to
asylum, nowhere else respected, apparently was considered sacro-
sanct."10 This stand on a matter of principle was not compromised; the
German officials were told that because the denationalized refugees
were no longer German citizens the Nazis could not deport them without
Denmark's consent. This, in Arendt's view, was an act of considerable
political courage reinforced by a display of solidarity when the King of
Denmark and the entire population chose publicly to wear the same Star
of David that German occupying forces compelled the Jewish refugees
to wear.

The Star of David stands for the Jews as a distinct people. Without
intrinsic interest in itself, this symbol has significance to the extent that
what it means to be a Jew becomes embodied in it. We can better
understand the dynamic structure of this meaning if we use Michael
Polanyi's distinction between subsidiary and focal awareness as it bears
on and enables us to distinguish between self-centred and self-giving
integrations.11
Tacit knowing is what Polanyi calls "knowing more than we can
tell." What this means is that to the extent that we exercise a skill-
physical or cognitive-we focus on it, having integrated the various
particulars of which it is composed. For example, the accomplished
9 Fraternity, for example, involves a bond valued for its own sake: it is a union of
sentiment. Solidarity equalizes people in the special condition that Arendt calls
"worldliness."' Fraternity does not require those caught in its bond to regard others so
circumstanced as equals in any publicly significant respect. Fraternity is primarily a
psychological phenomenon since it is not worldly but "has its natural place among the
repressed and persecuted, the exploited and humiliated." But above all fraternity,
especially when found among pariah people, may entail a worldlessness which is so
extreme as to be a form of barbarism. For a more systematic treatment of fraternity
see Andreas Eshete, "Fraternity," Review of Metaphysics 35 (1981), 27-44.
10 Hannah Arendt, "Sonning Prize Speech," The Papers of Hannah Arendt, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C., container 77.
11 Michael Polanyi, "Lecture on Meaning," The Papers of Michael Polanyi, The Univer-
sity of Chicago, Box 41, Folder 2.

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Solidarity in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt 729

pianist is not aware of the discrete movements of his fingers on the

keyboard nor the notes of which he takes notice as he plays. If he made
these things the focus of his attention, he would be unable to play; he
would be back at the stage he was when he was learning to read music
and familiarizing himself with the keyboard. The accomplished player
cannot afford to make the centre of his attention those particular move-
ments which collectively enable him to execute a sophisticated, holistic
act. He can only be tacitly aware of them; they are subsidiary to the
whole. He has integrated these particulars jointly to constitute a whole
of which he is aware in a focal or direct sense. Thus, in a self-centred
integration of the subsidiary particulars or clues to a focal whole, the
focus is of intrinsic interest, while the subsidiaries have no significance
in themselves. However, in a self-giving integration we surrender to
something, such as a flag or the Star of David, which is of no intrinsic
interest.12 We already have a range of meaningful experience which we
seek to embody in the object which, in itself, is meaningless. Therefore,
when the King of Denmark chose to wear the Star of David and was
accompanied in this act by the population at large, they were giving a
meaning to this symbol which, in at least one respect, overlapped that of
the Jews. This respect was that being a Jew meant that you were
expendable and, since the Jews were stateless, of no worldly signifi-
cance. By wearing the Star of David, the Danes were telling the Germans
that the occupying authorities would have to consider them to be
expendable as well. Denmark's claim that the Jews were covered by the
right to asylum was reasserted; the worldly status of the Jews was
affirmed; and the Germans were reminded of the worldly status of the
Danes. This way of "answering back" established solidarity with the
oppressed Jews on a moral and legal, not a sentimental basis.

Arendt's conception of universal solidarity has its origin in her distinc-

tion between nature and humanity: human beings are very unnatural
beings and cannot be fully understood in terms of the categories of
nature which we apply to animals. Humanity exists only to the extent
that humans are able to transcend their natural needs and attributes.
This conception of humankind articulates with two of Arendt's most
important concepts: natality-the possibility of the new and unexpected
which each new birth brings to the world; and plurality-the fact that
while there are many people in the world, each one is distinctive. Both of
these attributes require the freedom of a world for their activation and
realization. To forsake the world and become preoccupied with con-
12 Michael Polanyi, "Of Self-Giving," The Papers of Michael Polanyi, The University of
Chicago, Box 41, Folder 11.

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730 KEN RESHAUR

cerns of the self negates the possibility of human solidarity. Arendt's

account of how this has taken place in our time constitutes one of the
most harrowing and pessimistic chapters of her political thought.
Although Arendt's evocation of the Greek polis and the era of
foundation in the United States gives us an inspiring version of political
action, it is the respects in which recent events mark a decline of
solidarity which are more revealing, since Arendt acknowledges that
universal solidarity may be more appropriately conceived as a lack, as a
"negative phenomenon."'3 Accordingly I shall begin my explication of
this kind of solidarity by considering the meaning of Arendt's sense of
shame.
"I am ashamed of being human. This elemental shame, which many
people of the most various nationalities share with one another today, is
what finally is left of our sense of international solidarity and it has not
yet found an adequate political expression."l4 The idea of the solidarity
of humanity is something in which we can dwell; we can put our whole
existence into it in an act of surrender, thereby endowing it with mean-
ing. This concept in which we dwell embodies our diverse experience,
integrating it and attaining a non-mechanical, non-serial coherence
which is self-giving rather than self-centred.15 This moment of recogni-
tion, in which we "see" ourselves in others and thereby confirm our
membership in the same species while simultaneously retaining our own
perspective deriving from our unique space in the world, gives us a
generic identity. So, "when people say: I cannot see myself doing
something they abhor, it is the giving of themselves as a whole that they
are pondering. And they are right when thinking of it that they will have
to live with the image of themselves in the way they have acted."16 To be
repelled, and feel ashamed by what some who are similarly circum-
stanced have done to other persons or peoples with whom we share an
identity, as well as the earth, is to be burdened by the obligation of a
general responsibility for the actions of one's fellow human beings.
More specifically, the political significance of the idea of universal
solidarity is that it is "the only guarantee that one superior race"'7 will
not be successful in dominating humankind. Eichmann, by actively
supporting and implementing a policy of Jewish extermination,
breached universal solidarity. Therefore, the rest of the human race no
longer can be expected to share their common habitat-the earth-with
him.18 The example of Eichmann, extreme though it may be, is not
13 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: World Publishing, 1958),
315.
14 Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 234.
15 Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1975), chap. 4.
16 Polanyi, "Of Self-Giving."
17 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 161.
18 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Viking, 1963), 255-56.

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Solidarity in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt 731

unique. Much of Arendt' s writing documents how the idea of humanity,

to which we give ourselves and from which we receive confirmation of
our identity, has become a notion which terrorizes, haunts, grieves and
burdens us. Under such circumstances owning up to human solidarity is
a negative affirmation.
How did it happen that Arendt became ashamed of her human
status? The immediate answer is that humankind both allowed and
enabled totalitarianism to develop and exist. The more general answer,
given Arendt's conceptual commitments, is that there took place an
inexorable erosion of worldliness in the modern age. Not only was there
a transformation of property into wealth, or a class society into a mass
society, or solitude into loneliness or, finally, action into behaviour with
the consequence that life, not the world, became the highest good. As
well, and most ominous, people became superfluous in the context of a
temporality made meaningful by theories of inexorable processes of
history and nature.
Arendt begins her chronicle of how these developments had a
negative impact on our conception of the person by documenting the
loss of the juridical person in humankind. She observes that the Declara-
tion of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, proclaimed during the French
Revolution, attempted to derive both the origin of power and the foun-
dation of law from the same source.19 The result was the deification of
the people and the rejection of a transcendent anchor for the rights of
man.20 But by basing putative universal rights on the particular heritage
of specific nations, there arose a contradiction between the sovereignty
of the state and the obligation placed upon the state to be the guarantor of
rights which were universal in both scope and derivation.21
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this unstable com-
promise at the heart of the nation-state between the state as the vehicle
for the expression of the will of nationals-those citizens who had been
born into the dominant grouping of people in the state-and the state as
the expression of legal and political equality between different peoples
regardless of their national origin and relative power position, became
increasingly ineffective. This, combined with substantial erosion of the
European social, economic and political infrastructure, especially the
dissolution of class identification and the party system articulated with
it, gave rise to what Arendt calls a "new terrifying negative solidarity. '22
Stateless people were convinced that the loss of national rights entailed
the loss of human rights, so the tendency to seek identification in terms
of a national, as distinct from a state, affiliation was intensified. Corre-
spondingly, lack of success in finding a national grouping and therefore
19 Arendt, On Revolution, 183.
20 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 290-91.
21 Ibid., 230.
22 Ibid., 315.

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732 KEN RESHAUR

the inability to claim minority status intensified the rejection of stateless

status. Perhaps more decisive than anything else which occurred during
this period was the loss of the right of asylum, which had existed since
the beginning of Western civilization and which was "the only right that
had ever figured as a symbol of the Rights of Man in the sphere of
international relationships."23 This, along with the neglect of the repub-
lican understanding of communal life which holds that an infringement
on the rights of one is an infringement on the rights of all24 and which had
long been expressed in the dictum of equality before the law, was
deliberately repudiated as a consequence of the ascendance of the idea
of the national over that of the citizen and, ultimately, over that of the
human being.
Following the loss of rights was the loss of one's home, with all its
implications in terms of an assured place in the world with its associated
network of relationships. However what was truly "unprecedented
[was] not the loss of a home but the impossibility of finding a new
one."25 Next came the loss of legal status in all countries, not just one.
"The new refugees were persecuted not because of what they had done
or thought, but because of what they unchangeably were."26 They did
not fit into the fabric of any state because they were not a part of the
dominant group in that state and were therefore excluded from the
political community. Nobody even wanted to oppress them.27 Nobody
was interested in their opinion; the relation between what they did and
how they were treated was entirely contingent, so that their actions no
longer had any intelligible significance. They had, given the fact of a
completely organized humanity, lost their place in the world and with it
had lost their dignity as human beings. Since respect for human dignity
"implies the recognition of my fellow-men or our fellow-nations as
subjects, as cobuilders of a common world,"28 loss of human dignity is
"loss of the essential quality of man."29 In sum, Arendt maintains that
loss of the significance of speech and action amounts to the loss of
human dignity, which constitutes, in turn, the loss of a polity and the loss
of humanity. The Rights of Man ended when humankind was stripped of
all identifying attributes. Citizenship and dignity let both the individual
and the species show through. Loss of citizenship and loss of dignity left
humanity as a meaningless abstraction. The Rights of Man did not
articulate with reality in such a fashion that they could bear the burden
and encourage the potential of universal solidarity.
Following the loss of the juridical person was the loss of the moral
person in humankind. This was effected by a totalitarian regime which
deprived protest of an audience and therefore of a history. When one's

23 Ibid., 280. 27 Ibid., 297.

24 Ibid., 106. 28 Ibid., 458.
25 Ibid., 293. 29 Ibid., 297.
26 Ibid., 294.

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Solidarity in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt 733

death is made anonymous, it merely sets "a seal on the fact that he never
really existed."30 This applies equally to routinized murder and indi-
vidual suicide. Indeed, the latter was ambiguous morally since suicide
might have the consequence that one's family would be killed. This
prepared the way for the administration of the death camps to involve
inmates in running the camps, thereby blurring the distinction between
prisoner and persecutor.
Finally, Arendt considers the loss of identity as a consequence of
the loss of plurality. This occurred in the camps on an individual basis
and on a world scale on the basis of race. In the camps, spontaneous
violence designed to manipulate one's body in ways calculated to
destroy a sense of identity at least involved "a last remnant of humanly
understandable feeling."31 When this was replaced by a systematic,
calculated challenge to human dignity, its results confirmed "that
human beings can be transformed into specimens of the human animal,
and that man's 'nature' is only 'human' insofar as it opens up to man the
possibility of becoming something highly unnatural, that is, a man."32
Loss of plurality on the basis of race is, for Arendt, a political
tragedy of the first order: "race is, politically speaking, not the begin-
ning of humanity but its end."33 Consequently, she makes a distinction
between races and nations or peoples. For example, the European
"Pan" movements of the interwar period were, in her opinion, an
instance of tribal nationalism under seige, surrounded by hostile out-
siders rejecting their claims to be unique and of divine origin.34 These
racists "denied the great principle upon which national organizations of
peoples are built, the principle of equality and solidarity of all peoples
guaranteed by the idea of mankind."35 The fact that Eichmann had, by
his actions, denied this same principle, provided Arendt with the basis
and rationale for her judgment on him.
Arendt has quite a different conception of a people: it is a nation in
which what is held in common is not the sameness of race but partici-
pation in a shared language, history and culture. In the context of a world
federalism, individuals would mediate their political contribution
through the nation so that there would be both a sameness and diversity.
In contrast, a world government which had a direct relationship with the
individual and, corresponding to this, a world citizenship would mean
the end of all citizenship. It would not be the climax of world politics but
quite literally its end. This would be the outcome since such a political
arrangement would attempt "to overcome and eliminate authentic poli-
tics, that is, different peoples getting along with each other in the full
force of their power."36 The federal principle, then, is the one organiza-
30 Ibid., 452. 34 Ibid., 234.
31 Ibid., 454. 35 Ibid., 161.
32 Ibid., 455. 36 Ibid., 142, n. 38.
33 Ibid., 157.

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734 KEN RESHAUR

tional device that Arendt sees as capable, at some time in the future, of
providing the infrastructure for universal solidarity.

Arendt mentions two instances of solidarity of one's "own kind" or

what I shall call natural solidarity. They both illustrate a type of solidar-
ity in which what people have in common is a natural attribute. On the
other hand, only in the case of the family is the givenness they exemplify
that which typifies humanity in contradistinction to, say, a particular
racial group or age category. Arendt's characterization of these as
instances of solidarity is both unexpected and disappointing.
The first instance is found in Arendt's observation that the "natural
solidarity of 'white' men in alien lands"37 prompted the perversion of
national consciousness into race consciousness. Consistent with this is
her claim that, faced with a non-historical completely natural world in
which the restraints and conventions of Western society neither existed
nor applied, "the gentleman and the criminal felt not only the closeness
of men who share the same color of skin, but the impact of a world of
infinite possibilities for crimes committed in the spirit of play."38
The second instance is the family unit where she mentions that
"membership in a social class replaced the protection previously
offered by membership in a family, and social solidarity became a very
efficient substitute for the earlier, natural solidarity ruling the family
unit."39 While this passage mentioned interests-since class solidarity
would seem to be about interests-Arendt specifically refers to "natu-
ral" solidarity in the family. This combination and juxtaposition of
words, natural and solidarity, seems to be, in terms of the logic of
Arendt's position as stated at the beginning of this article, inconsistent if
not contradictory.
Finally, in a discussion of the crisis in education, Arendt advances
an argument against child-centred liberal education and makes a case for
the necessity of adult authority in the classroom if children are going to
be inducted properly into the world. An essential component of her
critique involves the salutary role which solidarity can play in the rela-
tion between the child and its peer group on the one hand, and the child
in its relation to adult authority on the other. She claims that the fact that
a child can "count on the solidarity of other children, that is, of his own
kind,"40 gives some base to the child from which a grievance can be
mounted and an argument made. It is the possibility that there is some
flexibility in the relationship which is the enabling condition for a contest
37 Ibid., 503.
38 Ibid., 190.
39 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), 232.
40 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: World Publishing, 1961), 181.

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Solidarity in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt 735

to take place. By contrast, there is no room to move for the child who is
in a singular minority confronting the unanimous opposition of its peer
group.
Now, apart from the persuasiveness of Arendt's indictment of
liberal education, her contention that solidarity springs from the posses-
sion of certain natural attributes ("his own kind"-is this the level to
which "objective bonds" has sunk?) or is activated by a natural status,
suggests that this conceptualization of "natural" solidarity is somewhat
distinctive. First of all, one need not earn the status of a solidary; both
the capacity and the existence of solidarity is presumed to exist by virtue
of natural, defining attributes. Second, and of considerable importance,
is the inescapable conclusion that solidarity, or at least this conception
of it, does not require a world for its existence or recognition. In the case
of children, one of the main points Arendt seeks to make is that the
educational process should function in such a fashion that it is an
introduction to the world for young people. But the schoolchildren who
are potential or actual solidaries do not yet have a world in Arendt's
sense; therefore, "natural" solidarity does not require a world-it can
flow from the presence and possession of natural attributes. In other
words, solidarity can exist in a natural state determined by natural
processes such as equivalence of physiological maturation on the part of
those among whom solidarity exists. This is entirely consistent with her
claim that natural solidarity developed among white people in those
colonies where the indigenous people and culture were alien, the natural
attribute being something entirely contingent and fortuitous: white skin.
We must, I believe, ask ourselves what was the enabling condition,
in this instance and the other two, for natural solidarity to exist. The
answer is straightforward: the lack of a world which enabled nature to
set the agenda for those who had lost a world and embraced with
enthusiasm their new-found worldlessness because of its "infinite pos-
sibilities"; those for whom the option neither occurred nor existed; and
those who had not yet become worldly. Worldless people do not, it
seems, choose natural solidarity: they accept it. And, in doing so, if
Arendt is to be consistent, the rationale of solidarity is perverted since it
is not committed to "ideas." On the basis of these examples, it seems
clear that natural solidarity is a condition in which both praise and
blame, responsibility and entitlement, are misplaced and irrelevant.
The use by Arendt of the term solidarity in these circumstances is,
as noted above, quite inconsistent with her normal usage. It is completely
at odds with her indictment of racism and dismissal of the political
claims of racists who imported considerations of nature into politics. It
also robs of its point and impact the thrust of her distinction between
human and natural behaviour.41

41 Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968),
12.

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736 KEN RESHAUR

In the passage from On Revolution cited near the beginning of this

article, Hannah Arendt claims that solidarity has to do not only with
lifting oppression but, as well, with overcoming exploitation. There is
little in her writings, however, which shows concern for the "social
question." This lack of consideration for socio-economic factors,
except as they have a negative impact on politics, has been widely noted
by both detractors and defenders of her work. Indeed, in one of the few
instances when she does mention solidarity in a socio-economic context,
it has at least as much to do with her views on student protest move-
ments as with university workers who were on strike for higher wages.42
Arendt's intransigence on the social question, her refusal to con-
sider society as anything more than a corruption of the private and a
threat to the public realm, is shown clearly in her response to the entire
question of decent housing. This, she claims, is an entirely administra-
tive matter-to be addressed and decided by experts.43 But, of course,
that is not at all the case. Decent housing is closely related to consider-
ations of human dignity. And by her own admission, human dignity is an
important and legitimate goal of solidarity. Hannah Arendt, in this
respect, simply refuses to consider the facts.
When it comes to a solidarity which is constituted in order to reject
tyranny and oppression, Hannah Arendt's account of the corruption of
solidarity by pity is very perceptive as well as significant. This, com-
bined with her critique of modernity to the effect that world-alienation
and not self-alienation is characteristic of contemporary Western soci-
ety,44 reminds us of the threat to solidarity posed by the self that has
ceased to be the means by which plurality is mediated, having itself
become the focus of attention. It is in such circumstances, of which our
time provides abundant examples, that Arendt's stress on revealing the
facts of oppression is extremely important. Solidarity, if it is authentic, is
founded on and informed by the facts-not feelings, especially those
which are thought to be vicarious.
42 Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1972), 203.
43 Melvyn Hill, Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1979), 319.
44 Arendt, The Human Condition, 231.

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