Extract: Anthony Court Considers Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Totalitarianism (Part Two)

Yesterday, we brought you part one of an extract from Anthony Court’s Hannah Arendt’s Response to the Crisis of Her Times, which Rozenberg Quarterly made available online. Today we bring you the second part of the extract, which is titled “Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Totalitarianism” and comprises chapter four of the book:

In chapter two of Hannah Arendt’s Response to the Crisis of her Time it was argued that Arendt’s typology of government rests on the twin criteria of organisational form and a corresponding ‘principle of action’. In the post-Origins essay On the Nature of Totalitarianism, Arendt argues that Western political thought has customarily distinguished between ‘lawful’ and ‘lawless’, or ‘constitutional’ and ‘tyrannical’ forms of government (Arendt 1954a: 340). Throughout Occidental history, lawless forms of government, such as tyranny, have been regarded as perverted by definition. Hence, if

… the essence of government is defined as lawfulness, and if it is understood that laws are the stabilizing forces in the public affairs of men (as indeed it always has been since Plato invoked Zeus, the god of the boundaries, in his Laws), then the problem of movement of the body politic and the actions of its citizens arises. (Arendt 1979: 466-7)

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Book details

• Hannah Arendt’s Response to the Crisis of Her Times by Anthony Court
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  EAN: 9781868885473
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