American Political Science Review Vol. 100, No.

1 February 2006

The Rule of the People: Arendt, Archê, and Democracy

PATCHEN MARKELL University of Chicago

T
his article presents a novel critical account of a key concept in democratic theory, “rule,” via
an unorthodox interpretation of Hannah Arendt’s work. Many theorists treat democracy as one
type of regime; others, stressing the importance of unruliness to democratic politics, challenge
the reduction of democracy to a form of rule. Although this debate remains caught within conventional
oppositions between order, closure, and continuity; and interruption, openness, and novelty, Arendt
shows this whole matrix of oppositions to be an artifact of the dominance of a hierarchical understanding
of rule. Her unusual critique of rule and her distinctive account of the meaning of “beginning” draw
attention to an important dimension of political activity that lies off these axes of opposition, shedding
new light on democratic agency and the forces that obstruct it.

Perhaps the very fact that these two ele- the social and political forces that obstruct democracy.
ments, the concern with stability and the What, then, does it mean to say that in democracy the
spirit of the new, have become opposites in people rule?
political thought and terminology . . . must In mainstream democratic theory, the term “rule”
be recognized to be among the symptoms has received relatively little attention, not because it
of our loss.
has been thought to be unimportant, but because its
—–Hannah Arendt (1965, 223) meaning has seemed comparatively straightforward.
To “rule,” Webster’s tells us, means “to have power
emocracy,” writes David Held (1996) or command,” to “exercise supreme authority,” and

“D “means a form of government in which, in

contradistinction to monarchies and aris-
tocracies, the people rule” (1). One important kind of
“to exercise control.”2 To say that democracy is a form
of rule, then, is just to say that it is one distinctive
way of arranging the institutions and practices through
which authoritative decisions are made and executed in
democratic theory is devoted to filling in the details
of this basic formula, and to debating the merits of a polity. Of course, there has been fierce disagreement
the resulting array of models of democracy: classical, about what, exactly, makes rule democratic. For an
modern, direct, representative, participatory, minimal- early generation of state-centered political scientists,
ist, deliberative, aggregative, and so on. Another im- democratic rule meant government authorized by a
portant kind of democratic theory, however, lingers sovereign people with a common will; for their pluralist
over the “elementary idea” of democracy itself, ex- critics, it referred to authoritative decisions generated
ploring problems that lurk in and behind its basic terms by a process that balanced the competing interests of a
(Dahl 1989, 3). Lately, for instance, many democratic multiplicity of groups (Gunnell 2004). For adherents of
theorists have been preoccupied with the fraught idea the so-called minimalist account of democracy, rule is
of “the people,” asking what sorts of things peoples democratic when people are able to choose their rulers
are and how their boundaries are to be settled. This in competitive elections (Schumpeter 1942); for others,
is a question about identity; about who the people more intensive and direct forms of popular participa-
are. There is, however, an equally vital but relatively tion in government are required (Pateman 1970). These
neglected question to be asked about activity; about and similar disagreements, however, are ultimately
what the people do.1 Our characterizations of the activ- about who rules under this or that institutional arrange-
ity of democratic politics have far-reacing implications: ment: the thought that politics is at bottom a matter of
they shape our efforts to give practical expression to ruling, and that ruling consists in the exercise of author-
democratic principles, as well as our assessments of itative control, remains part of the taken-for-granted
background against which these debates take place.3
One important strand of democratic theory, how-
Patchen Markell is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Univer- ever, throws the idea of rule as such into relief. It
sity of Chicago, 5828 South University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637
([email protected]). does so by drawing in an unexpected way on a species
For comments on earlier drafts, I thank John Ackerman, Shadi of antidemocratic polemic. From classical Athens on-
Bartsch, Anita Chari, Elisabeth Conradi, Jennifer Culbert, Jodi ward, critics of democracy have argued that because
Dean, Michaele Ferguson, Andrea Frank, Jill Frank, Jason Frank,
Bonnie Honig, Sina Kramer, John McCormick, Emily Nacol, Sofia
Näsström, David Newstone, Andrew Norris, Paul Passavant, Jacob 2 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Lan-
Schiff, Jay Schleusener, Alexandra Segerberg, Lee Sigelman, Verity guage Unabridged, s.v. “Rule.”
Smith, Roy Tsao, Candace Vogler, Deva Woodly, Iris Young, Lena 3 The phrase “who rules” is Dahl’s (used interchangeably with “who
Zuckerwise, three anonymous readers for the APSR, the members governs” in Dahl 1961, e.g., 1, 89). Dahl (1989) illustrates the invis-
of my 2003 seminar on Arendt, and audiences at Stockholm Univer- ibility of the concept of rule as such: the fundamental questions of
sity, the University of Chicago, and the 2003 Annual Meeting of the democratic theory, he says, are “who ought to comprise ‘the people’
APSA. Work on this article was supported by a Faculty Fellowship at and what does it mean for them ‘to rule”’ (3), yet for him this second
the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago. question concerns what counts as rule by the people, not what “rul-
1 For similar efforts to shift attention from identity to agency see ing” is; he settles that issue quickly and tacitly by defining democracy
Ferguson 2003, Frank 2004, Tully 1999, and Zerilli 2005. as “a unique process of making collective and binding decisions” (5).

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The Rule of the People February 2006

the people are nothing but a formless multitude, inca- understood as products of the exercise of supreme au-
pable of government, their rule would in effect be no thoritative control. For Arendt, by contrast, the prob-
rule at all, but monstrous disorder. Many democratic lem with the term “rule” is precisely that it carries
theorists respond to this charge by straightforwardly with it this problematic but little-questioned interpre-
defending the people’s qualifications for rule, but some tation of political phenomena; from her perspective,
refuse to accommodate themselves to the terms of this the whole matrix of oppositions that structures con-
critique. Sheldon Wolin, for example, has famously temporary democratic theory is itself an artifact of the
proposed “accepting the familiar charges that democ- ongoing dominance of this interpretation, which was
racy is inherently unstable, inclined toward anarchy, originally employed to rationalize hierarchical social
and identified with revolution, and using these traits and political forms.5 Correspondingly, Arendt’s aim is
as the basis for a different, aconstitutional conception not simply to rehabilitate those phenomena that, within
of democracy” (Wolin 1994, 37). Skeptical of the very that matrix, are positioned as rule’s opposites: on her
idea of democracy as a regime, Wolin reminds us that use, “beginning” picks out not the spontaneous dis-
subjection inhabits every form of rule, even those in ruption of existing patterns, but the sense in which ac-
which we exercise considerable control over our rulers, tion, whether disruptive or not, involves attention and
or rule ourselves; and he warns that, in conceiving of responsiveness to worldly events; and what threatens
democracy as a system of command and obedience, “beginning” thus understood is not the enforcement
we risk sacrificing the spirit of insubordination that of regularity, but the erosion of the contexts in which
animates it.4 events call for responses and, thus, in which it makes
Such challenges have opened up space for thinking sense to act at all.
explicitly about rule. At the same time, because they To make this case, this article draws an unfamil-
proceed by inverting a common objection to democ- iar Arendt out from under familiar interpretations by
racy, the space they have opened is structured by a attending to neglected or puzzling elements in her
series of stark oppositions between those phenomena work, including her insistence that the Greek archê and
rule is supposed to enable, such as stability, order, clo- archein meant not only “rule” and “to rule” but also
sure, and continuity, and those it is supposed to inhibit, “beginning” and “to begin”; her suggestion that nov-
such as change, interruption, openness, and novelty. elty inheres in all events, even those that are expected
These oppositions have driven democratic theory into or predicted; and the curious epigraph from Dante
difficulties. Although the subtlest democratic critics of at the head of the chapter on action in The Human
rule, Wolin included, do not merely reject the first set Condition, which shows her account of beginning to
of terms in favor of the second, neither is it clear how be part of a subtle critique of hierarchical doctrines of
their acknowledgment of the importance of rule is to rule and of the version of Aristotelian metaphysics on
be reconciled with their embrace of unruliness; the re- which they rely. These detailed readings clarify long-
sult has been an increasing tendency to characterize standing interpretive puzzles about the meaning of the
democracy as a constitutively paradoxical enterprise, larger conception of action in which Arendt’s treat-
caught between the ideal of popular sovereignty, in ments of rule and beginning are embedded, puzzles
which the people jointly exercise control over their that are structured by oppositions analogous to those
collective destiny, and the ideal of popular insurgency, that govern contemporary debates about democracy
in which the people spontaneously shatter the bonds and rule. By altering our sense of how Arendt fits into
of established political forms. In this article, I neither those contemporary debates, however, these readings
affirm this paradox nor solve it. Instead, with the help also help reorient democratic theory, opening new ways
of an unorthodox interpretation of the thought of Han- of thinking about the impediments to democracy and
nah Arendt, I attempt to loosen the grip this paradox about the nature and operation of political practices
and its terms have on us, and to direct our attention and institutions.
to a neglected dimension of concern about democratic
political activity that lies off the conceptual axis defined
by these two opposing visions of democracy.
ARENDT AND THE PARADOX OF RULE
Arendt might seem a surprising candidate for this Although Sheldon Wolin is perhaps the best-known
undertaking: her consistently critical stance toward critic of the idea of democracy as a regime among
the concept of rule, and her appreciation of the phe- American political scientists, his appreciation of the un-
nomenon of novelty or “beginning,” would appear to comfortable fit between democracy and rule is shared
pull us back toward the terms of the problem I have
just described. However, Arendt’s critique of rule is
5 Arendt’s critique of conventional views of ruling thus fits well with
distinctive. Her claim is not that the practice of ruling,
by securing stability, stifles change: that sort of criticism Wittgenstein’s (1953) critique of conventional views of rules and rule-
following, at least as long as Wittgenstein is not understood as saying
questions the value of rule for politics, but it accepts merely that rules, as instruments for the production of control, leave
the conventional view of what ruling is and how it more room than we sometimes believe for non-rule-bound freedom.
works—–including especially the assumption that stabil- What is radical about both Arendt and Wittgenstein is that they
ity, continuity, order, and related phenomena are to be refuse the opposition between rules as sources of determination and
freedom as the power to exceed or transform rule, thereby letting us
see the fundamental similarity (though not identity) of breaking or
4 For similar argument made in terms of liberalism see Flathman subverting a rule; modifying a rule; and going on as before. See, for
1998. example, Pitkin 1993, Tully 1999, Zerilli 2003.

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American Political Science Review Vol. 100, No. 1

by a range of democratic theorists working in oth- character mean that “democratic politics renders ev-
erwise disparate traditions. Just as Wolin embraces erything provisional and open to question,” including
conventional depictions of democracy as anarchic especially the identity of “the people” itself. On the
and revolutionary, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri other hand, “in order to be the kind of entity able to
(2004), building on a distinctive reading of Spinoza, have and to regulate its own collective life, ‘the people’
abandon the idea of the sovereign people in favor of the must take on an identity whose relative clarity and
“multitude,” which they call a “maddeningly elusive” stability depend on particular foundations, traditions,
subject that “cannot be entirely corralled into the hier- and institutional forms that cannot be fully general or
archical organs of a political body,” and which “ban- fully open to question” (10). For Keenan, this means
ishes sovereignty from politics” (192, 340). Jacques that democracy is an ideal “at odds with itself, torn
Rancière identifies democracy with the “rupture in the between the closure necessary for the people’s iden-
logic of arche,” or rule, that takes place when those tity and rule, and the openness of contestation and
who have “no part” within a regime suddenly appear revisability” (13). This, in turn, makes democracy into
and speak in public without authorization (Rancière a site of “inevitable trespass, failure, frustration, dis-
2001, par. 14; 1999, 29–30). Finally, Ernesto Laclau appointments, and incompletion,” because democratic
(2001, 7; Laclau and Mouffe 1985), building on the actors always risk betraying some of their principles in
influential work of Claude Lefort (1988, 17), charac- their efforts to respect others (22). Although Keenan
terizes democracy as constitutively torn between rule recognizes that such accounts of democracy, with their
and the suspension of rule—–or, in his terms, between Sisyphean feel, might easily provoke withdrawal or re-
the “occupation” of the “place of power” by particular sentment, he insists that that it is better to face up to
groups who claim to represent universal values, and the the paradox than to sweep the problem under a tidy
equally ongoing exposure of the ideological character philosophical rug, and so he counsels us to supplement
of every such claim, which keeps the place of power “overly formal and theoretical” affirmations of demo-
open or “empty.” cratic paradox with practical strategies, including new
Although at least some of these authors flirt with forms of civic virtue, that will “make it easier to accept
a simple rejection of rule, all ultimately acknowledge the frustration and limitation of democratic action”
that rule is unavoidable, perhaps even (partly) benefi- without falling into resignation or rage (20, 22).
cial. This acknowledgment pulls against these authors’ The contours of this conversation about democracy
forceful critiques of rule, and the resulting tension both and rule are echoed in contemporary treatments of the
enriches and troubles their work. It leaves Wolin caught political thought of Hannah Arendt. For some readers,
between two pictures of democracy that he does not Arendt’s most obvious contribution to our thinking
quite reconcile: democracy as an episodic, “fugitive” about rule lies in her forceful denial that ruling has
rebelliousness in the face of the nearly overwhelming any proper place in politics at all, notwithstanding its
power of state and capital; and democracy as a contin- central position in the tradition of Western political
uous, everyday practice of cooperation, deliberation, thought. In The Human Condition, for instance, Arendt
and decision making (Wolin 1996; 2004, 601–6; Xenos (1958) argues that “the concept of rule” is at the center
2001). Similarly, Hardt and Negri (2004) alternate be- of the philosophical tradition’s long-standing effort to
tween invocations of the unlimited potential of the escape from the uncertain world of politics—–typically
multitude to exceed every form or order—–under the by substituting the logic of “making” or poiêsis, in
slogan “become different than you are!” (356)—–and which a craftsman applies an already-given set of “rules
characterizations of the activity of the multitude in and standards” to his material, for the unruliness of
terms of “decision-making” and “the rule of everyone genuine action (222, 227; see also Villa 1996, 51). Like-
by everyone” (339, 237; Passavant 2004; Shapiro 2004). wise, in On Revolution, Arendt (1965) seems to em-
For Rancière, the tension gives rise to an account of brace an idea of freedom as what she calls “no-rule,”
democracy as an ephemeral practice, always “on the a kind of political life “without a division between
shore of its own disappearance,” as the unauthorized rulers and ruled” and from which, in fact, “the notion
voices that momentarily expose the injustice at the of rule . . . was entirely absent” (30). This rejection of
heart of rule find themselves incorporated within a “rule” has led some readers to identify Arendt, approv-
new order or regime (Rancière 2001, par. 25; Deranty ingly, with an anarchic tradition of political thought that
2003, 152–53); and for Laclau (1996) the tension re- sees freedom as intrinsically opposed to form and asso-
sults in what sometimes sound like self-contradictory ciated instead with revolutionary events (Vatter 2000,
descriptions of democratic political action: democracy, 14) or with perpetual movement and the transgression
he writes, consists in “the ambiguous practice of trying of borders (Herzog 2004); and it has led other readers,
to fill [a] gap”—–to occupy the empty space signified by even sympathetic ones, to worry about the “immoral-
universal terms like “the people”—–“while keeping it ism” that seems to lurk within her account of action as
permanently open” (59). “eruptive,” revolutionary creativity (Kateb 2000, 134–
The tensions that characterize these approaches are 44).
not necessarily flaws. Instead, as Alan Keenan has elo- Other readers of Arendt take her to be more ambiva-
quently argued, they may be signs of responsiveness lent toward the phenomenon of rule, but these readings
to paradoxes intrinsic to the very notion of democracy. remain structured by the presupposition of an oppo-
On the one hand, Keenan (2003) explains, democracy’s sition between rule and freedom, closure and open-
radical inclusiveness and its radically self-grounding ness. Keenan (2003), for example, writes that Arendt’s

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The Rule of the People February 2006

conception of political freedom in terms of nov- Nevertheless, there is reason to suspect that Arendt
elty “illuminate[s] in profound ways the constitutive does more than simply reproduce the paradox of
openness of democratic politics” (17), which, prop- democracy and rule; and, relatedly, that the function of
erly understood, is never a closed system but is per- her conception of action is different than we have sup-
manently exposed to the possibilities of critique, con- posed. Consider her comments about rule more closely.
testation, expansion, transformation, and reinvention. In The Human Condition and elsewhere, Arendt (1958)
At the same time, Arendt also sees that freedom un- argues that “rule” in its ordinary sense of a power of
derstood as beginning is, on its own, an evanescent command over others is a deeply antipolitical concept,
phenomenon: as Keenan (80) says, it “needs the sup- the “hallmark” of various efforts by political actors
port of political foundations in order to be more than and philosophers, starting with Plato, to “escape from
an occasional or marginal occurrence.” This generates politics altogether” (222). Yet the dominance of “rule”
a paradox, for while Arendt tries to identify a kind in this sense, Arendt claims, actually represents the
of foundation that could be made perfectly consistent loss of a vital ambiguity in the Greek words archê and
with freedom—–looking first, in The Human Condition, archein, the terms that are now conventionally trans-
to the phenomenon of promising, and then, in On Revo- lated into English as the noun “rule” and the verb “to
lution, to the American Constitution—–neither of these rule,” and which are often rendered Herrschaft and
attempts succeeds. “Promising,” Keenan says, like the herrschen in German.7 These Greek words, Arendt
constitutionalization of authority, “can effectively lay observes, originally had to do with “beginning,” with
down the law of freedom only by immediately violating setting something into motion, as well as with leading;
that same law: it is a free act that at once makes less while the complementary verb prattein (whence praxis)
than fully free all acts that follow its law and exam- originally referred to the achievement or completion of
ple” (89; see also 95). On this reading, Arendt’s work a course of action.8 The interrelatedness of these two
gives us both poles of the fundamental tension between action-terms, archein and prattein, captured something
democracy’s unruliness and its need for rule. of the mutual vulnerability that Arendt says character-
Both of these ways of interpreting Arendt’s (1958) izes action: “the dependence of the beginner and leader
critique of rule fit well with, and are sustained by, a upon others for help and the dependence of his follow-
common way of understanding her larger theoretical ers upon him for an occasion to act themselves” (189).
project: one that sees her as attempting to purify poli- Actors and theorists alike, however, experienced this
tics of a whole host of supposedly nonpolitical phenom- vulnerability as a limitation, and their efforts to insulate
ena, such as rule, violence, sovereignty, embodiment, themselves from the uncertainties of action—–to “make
sentiment, and many others. There is good reason to sure that the beginner would remain the complete mas-
read Arendt this way: she often presents herself pre- ter of what he had begun”—–are reflected in the subse-
cisely as a policer of boundaries, reminding us of the dif- quent transformations in the meaning of these terms.
ferences among the various components of the vita ac- “In the realm of action,” their thinking went, “this iso-
tiva so that we can keep each one in its “proper location lated mastership can be achieved only if the others are
in the world” (73). In particular, because it is action that no longer needed to join the enterprise of their own
seems to be most in danger of being smothered by these accord, with their own motives and aims, but are used
other phenomena, doing this seems to require that she to execute orders, and if, on the other hand, the begin-
“discover a set of criteria that will isolate genuinely ner who took the initiative does not permit himself to
political action from its various simulacra” (Villa 1996, get involved in the action itself” (Arendt, 1958, 222).
20). It is at this point, however, that the substantive As a consequence, archein and prattein “split into two
problem of the relationship between democracy and
rule joins up with a long-standing interpretive prob- 7 Arendt’s (1960) own translation of The Human Condition into

lem about the meaning of Arendt’s concept of action, German consistently uses herrschen, Herrschaft, and so forth where
for it has proved maddeningly difficult for her readers the English edition has “rule,” and her comments about the Greek
archê and archein in her German-language notebooks focus on the
to flesh out these criteria, and so to determine “what interpretation of archê as Herrschaft (e.g., 2002, 161). Her close as-
specific activities count” for her as instances of action sociation of “rule” with Herrschaft may explain why Arendt does
(Villa 1996, 28). The trouble is that, strictly understood, not try to reclaim the English term: Herrschaft, which can be traced
genuine action can seem vanishingly rare (and rar- back to medieval German words designating superior rank as well as
efied), hemmed in by irresistible social forces as well seniority, does not bear the same productive ambiguity she finds in
archê and archein (Moraw 1982, 5–6). Indeed, when Arendt (1958)
as by Arendt’s own puritanical insistence that action translates the phrase “new form of government” into German twice
be undertaken for the sake of nothing but itself; while, in the space of one paragraph in The Human Condition, initially to
capaciously understood, action can lose its specificity, refer to totalitarianism and then to refer to the “people’s councils” to
as though anything could be action if it were regarded which she was famously sympathetic—–she renders it “neu[e] Staats-
und Herrschaftsform” in the first instance and “neue Staats- und
in the right way or done in the right spirit.6 Just as Regierungsform” in the second (216; 1960, 211), which suggests that
democracy has come to seem torn between rule and she is willing to use derivatives of the Latin rego (to which both
novelty, order and change, Arendt’s idiosyncratic con- regieren and “rule” are related) when she could contrast them with
ception of action has also come to seem torn between herrschen and Herrschaft. (This does not mean that rego-derivatives
the extremes of narrowness and ubiquity. are, for her, unambiguously positive: for a contrasting case, see her
discussion of “rules” [Regeln] in 1958, 225–27; thanks to an APSR
reviewer on this point.)
6 For an especially vivid account of this problem see Pitkin 1998, 8 Arendt 1958, 189, 222–25; see also 1968, 165–66; 1965, 213; 2002,
177–83; see also Dietz 2002, chapters 5–6; Honig 1993, chapter 4. 161, 327.

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American Political Science Review Vol. 100, No. 1

altogether different functions: the function of giving about the sources of their own power and so exposes
commands, which became the prerogative of the ruler, them to failure and reversal (189; see also 222, 227).
and the function of executing them, which became the This, too, indicates that the point of her critique of rule
duty of his subjects (Arendt 1958, 189; see also 222–23). and her recovery of beginning is not to celebrate those
Once archein and prattein were separated in this way, phenomena that are conventionally taken to be rule’s
archein itself—–now recognizable as what we conven- opposites, such as disorder, instability, interruptions of
tionally call “ruling”—–began to lose its ambiguity, and regularity, or radical breaks in continuity, but to prise
the idea of “beginning” came to play an increasingly apart phenomena that the idea of “rule” has taught us
insignificant role in the conceptualization of action and to see as inseparably connected.
politics. Plato himself did still exploit the “equivocal Understood in these terms, Arendt’s work would in-
significance of the word archein” by appealing to the tersect with debates in contemporary democratic the-
soul’s status as the beginning (archê) of all motion in ory in an unexpected way. It would suggest that the
order to explain why the soul ought to rule (archein) the paradox that democratic theorists have identified in
body.9 Yet to think about beginning in this way, which the relationship between democracy and rule may best
reduced it to a kind of “legitimation” of rule, actually be understood neither as a problem to be solved nor as
prepared the ground for the ultimate disappearance of a limitation to be accepted, but rather as a symptom of
“the element of beginning,” in the sense of the initia- the ongoing dominance of political theory and practice
tion of an undertaking, “from the concept of rulership.” by the idea of rule—–that is, by a set of background
“With it,” Arendt (1958) concludes, “the most elemen- assumptions about the world that are held in common
tary and authentic understanding of human freedom by those who see democracy as a structure of author-
disappeared from political philosophy” (224–25). itative control, and by those who reject such regime-
Two features of this critique of rule deserve special oriented views of democracy in the name of revolution-
attention. First and most fundamental is its attention ary insubordination, and by those whose work is struc-
to language. For Arendt, the elements of our politi- tured by their acknowledgment of the appeal of both
cal vocabulary are not just ways of pointing to given positions. Consider again Claude Lefort’s influential
things in the world: the capacity of a word like “rule” description of the transition from monarchy to democ-
to refer to something always also involves an interpre- racy, in which “power,” once embodied in the king,
tation of the world, an explicit or tacit sense of why becomes an “empty place” (Lefort 1988, 17). For many
some phenomena belong together, what they are like, of Lefort’s readers, this story expresses the paradoxical
and why they are significant. By focusing specifically conditions under which democratic politics is bound to
on the language of rule—–that is, on the gaps between proceed (Keenan 2003, 5–8; Laclau and Mouffe 1985,
the meanings of terms that are often thought to be 186–87; Rancière 2001, pars. 15–16). For Arendt, by
equivalent, like archê and “rule,” or on differences in contrast, this story would count less as a representa-
the use of archê and archein themselves across time or tion of our real conditions than as a vivid example of
from one author to another—–Arendt signals that her our enthrallment by the picture of rule as authoritative
concerns about rule lie at this level: instead of revers- control. In Lefort’s account, after all, the “place” of
ing the positive valence traditionally assigned to the power remains central to the idea of democracy even
phenomenon called “rule,” she aims her critique at the in its inaccessibility; it is the thing democracy must si-
interpretation of the world that the word “rule” carries multaneously need, want, lack, and flee. To affirm the
with it (and which underlies both positive and negative paradoxes that flow from such a picture, then, would
assessments of rule’s place in politics). Second, among not be a first step toward a more nuanced form of
the particular features of this interpretation that draw practice, attuned to its own limitations; instead, such
Arendt’s critical attention, one of the most important theoretical affirmations of paradox would be among
is the close association it posits between relationships the causes and the signs of our practical paralysis. To
of subordination on the one hand and such phenom- spell out this possibility, and to prepare the ground
ena as stability, regularity, and continuity on the other. for a parallel diagnosis of the broader problem I have
The conceit of the idea of rule, Arendt (1958) tells us, described in Arendt’s larger theory of action, we need
is “the notion that men can lawfully and politically to take up her account of “beginning” in more detail.
live together only when some are entitled to com-
mand and the others forced to obey” (222). Yet the
fact that structures of subordination often do produce
WHAT IS BEGINNING?
more or less stable orders does not mean that they
are the only forms of human relationship that can do Given the unusual nature of Arendt’s critique of
so, nor does it mean that their strategies for ensuring rule—–and given, in particular, her insistence on linking
stability are sustainable: the ideal of isolated master- “beginning” back to words such as archê and archein
ship, as Arendt repeatedly reminds us, misleads rulers that have come to suggest the stifling of novelty—–we
should expect that her appeals to the phenomenon of
beginning will turn out to be more than just an effort to
9 Arendt (1958) says that “it is decisive for Plato, as he says expressly
rehabilitate unruliness. However, it is not obvious what
at the end of the Laws, that only the beginning (archê) is entitled
to rule (archein)” (224); as her notebooks indicate, this is a gloss on
else “beginning” could mean. Arendt’s readers typi-
Laws 895b and 967d (Plato [1926] 2004, 332–33; 562–63). See Arendt cally suppose that the paradigmatic instance of begin-
2002, 323–24. ning is an act that interrupts an existing series or a given

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The Rule of the People February 2006

order (see, e.g., Beiner 1984, 355; d’Entrèves 1994, 68), find expression in The Human Condition. After criti-
and thus that beginning is, precisely, that which is closed cizing appeals to laws of cause and effect in historical
down by rule—–by the making of decisions, the appli- writing, Arendt offers a different characterization of
cation of principles, the consolidation of identities, the the task of the historian:
issuing of commands. Arendt’s work sometimes seems
to support this understanding of beginning: in “What Just as in our personal lives our worst fears and best
hopes will never adequately prepare us for what ac-
is Freedom,” for instance, she seems to contrast action, tually happens—–because the moment even a foreseen
in the sense of beginning, with the operation of “au- event takes place, everything changes, and we can never
tomatic processes,” which generate only “stagnation” be prepared for the inexhaustible literalness of this
and “petrifaction” (Arendt 1968, 168–69). Against this “everything”—–so each event in human history reveals an
background, she says, a new beginning “breaks into unexpected landscape of human deeds, sufferings, and new
the world”; it is experienced as an “infinite improbabil- possibilities which together transcend the sum total of all
ity” (169). Such characterizations echo Arendt’s phe- willed intentions and the significance of all origins. It is the
nomenology of “natality,” which is her name for that task of the historian to detect this unexpected new with all
aspect of the human condition in virtue of which we its implications in any given period and to bring out the
possess “the capacity of beginning something anew, full power of its significance. (1994, 320)
that is, of acting” (Arendt 1958, 9).This condition is What is crucial about this passage is the puzzling claim
manifest in those acts in which “something new is that a kind of unexpectedness and novelty—–which
started which cannot be expected from whatever may Arendt immediately equates with “archê” and “begin-
have happened before”; which take place “against the ning,” and ties not just to the activity of the historian
overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their proba- but also to political science and political action (Arendt
bility” (1958, 178). Beginning thus understood refers to 1994, 320–21)—–is a feature of all events, including those
a human possibility that is the very opposite of regular- that are hoped, feared, or foreseen. Several years later,
ity: it means, as James Tully (1999) puts it, “the freedom Arendt (1968) amplifies the same thought in “What is
of speaking and acting differently in the course of the Freedom,” where she writes that “every act” is, from a
game” (164, emphasis added). certain perspective, a “miracle”; and that “it is because
One problem with this reading, however, is that it of this element of the ‘miraculous’ present in all reality
treats Arendt’s concepts of beginning and natality as that events, no matter how well anticipated in fear or
something akin to restrictive clauses in grammar—–that hope, strike us with a shock of surprise once they have
is, as qualifications that pick out the particular subset come to pass” (169–70).
of human acts that actualize the power to break with In what sense could something “foreseen” or “antic-
an existing series or pattern. The trouble with that ap- ipated” nevertheless also be “unexpected”? Arendt’s
proach is twofold. The first issue has to do with the point cannot be to claim that even those things of which
formal function of the concept of action (with which we count ourselves certain are, as matters of scientific
beginning and natality are associated) in Arendt’s text: fact, uncertain, or that even those acts that conform to
Arendt’s famous triad of “labor,” “work,” and “action” our expectations count as beginnings if the agent could
does not operate straightforwardly as a set of categories have chosen to act differently: even to dwell on the
into which different instances of human activity are to margins of error in our expectations, or on the space of
be sorted; indeed, she herself suggests that activities underdetermination, is still to remain in the register of
may belong to more than one of these at once.10 (As I cause and effect, and that, she insists, is never enough
have suggested, however, it seems equally problematic to account for the phenomenon of beginning (Arendt
to think of these categories as something like a set 1994, 319–20). Instead, her point is that when an event
of dimensions that inhere in every instance of human passes from possibility to actuality—–regardless of how
activity, because part of the point of the book seems to probable or improbable we may have taken it to be
be to warn against the loss of certain capacities or pos- while it was still only a possibility—–something changes
sibilities; if that’s right, then there must be something in a different register; namely, the register in which
restrictive about these concepts. I shall return to this happenings are not only caused states of affairs but
problem.) The second issue is substantive: at crucial also meaningful events, features of a world, and, in par-
points, Arendt says things that seem inconsistent with ticular, occasions for response.11 Even the most purely
the conventional reading of beginning or natality as the strategic kinds of response are crucially affected by
power to break with a series, change direction, or act the passage between the possible and the actual: what
differently. Consider a passage from “Understanding might have invited preemption or prevention now in-
and Politics,” one of the most important transitional vites retaliation or compensation, for instance; and the
essays Arendt wrote after the publication of Origins of significance of this difference is no less when it comes
Totalitarianism, as she was undertaking the work on the to other modes of response, from holding liable, to
tradition of political philosophy that would eventually forgiving, to narrating, to thanking, to following, and so
on. To say that all events exhibit unexpectedness in this
10 For instance, Arendt (1958, 182–83) says that action is typically sense, then, is to say that no degree of certainty about
“about some worldly objective reality” in addition to being “a dis-
closure of the acting and speaking agent,” which suggests a kind of
“overgrow[th]” of the work-world with the action-world, rather than 11 On the terms “occasion” and “response” in Arendt see Curtis
a sharp separation between them (see Tsao 2002, 101). 1999, chapter 5.

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whether something will or will not happen, and what it natality in the sense of birth a “condition” of begin-
will turn out to be, can smooth over the difference be- ning would be to say that birth is the fundamental phe-
tween “not yet” and “already.” Beginning is tied to the nomenon on the basis of which this difference becomes
perspective or stance in which that difference matters: meaningful: it is that in virtue of which the actuality of
the novelty of a new beginning, its eruptiveness, arises events acquires its weight. This reading seems to be
not out of the degree of qualitative difference it mani- confirmed by Arendt’s account of the phenomenon of
fests with respect to what has come before, as though time. The individual life-story, she says, which has a
the features of this act were being compared with the beginning and an end, is “distinguished from all other
features of its predecessors by a neutral observer of things by the rectilinear course of its movement, which,
history, standing outside of time, but precisely out of so to speak, cuts through the circular movement of bio-
an agent’s attunement to its character as an irrevocable logical life” (Arendt 1958, 19). Birth and death, in other
event, and therefore also as a new point of departure.12 words, are the conditions of the experience of linear
Some further evidence for this way of understand- time.14 This is why Arendt calls the appearance and dis-
ing beginning comes from the fact that it helps make appearance of individual human beings the “supreme
sense of Arendt’s characterization of natality as a con- events” (97, emphasis added). It is also why she ties
dition of human life, rather than as a feature of human action, in the sense of a new beginning, so closely to
nature or a property of the will. Although Arendt’s what she calls the “disclosure” of the uniqueness of the
capsule account of natality is well known, it is also individual agent (175ff): not, as is sometimes supposed,
deceptively simple. The word “natality” refers to the because action necessarily expresses an individualistic
fact that human beings are born; at the same time, it or self-centered attitude on the part of the actor, but
refers to the capacity of human beings to engage in simply because she thinks that the lives of distinct per-
action—–to give birth, as it were, to new beginnings sons, whose beginnings and ends are the markers that
(Arendt 1958, 8–9, 177).These two senses of natal- lend our experience of time its linear character, are
ity are, somehow, connected: we are “newcomers and for this reason the medium of action: the points into
beginners by virtue of birth”; our words and deeds which meaning gathers and from which it disperses,
are “like a second birth” (176, 177, emphasis added). dependent on but never determined by the initiative of
That connection is captured in Arendt’s beloved pas- individuals.15
sage from Augustine—–“that there be a beginning, man On Arendt’s understanding, then, beginning is by no
was created before whom there was nobody”—–which means only manifest in acts that depart from an existing
means, on her gloss, that “with the creation of man, series or constitute a “radical break with our ordinary
the principle of beginning came into the world.”13 Yet expectations” (Beiner 1984, 355). Instead, the term
the precise nature of this connection is uncertain. If “beginning” points to a kind of novelty that can also
we lean toward a literal reading of Arendt’s deploy- be present in moments that satisfy our expectations,
ment of Augustine, we might take her to mean that the follow existing patterns, or continue observable regu-
power of beginning is a faculty each human being pos- larities, but which comes into view only from a stance
sesses, implanted in us with the creation of the species of practical engagement with events. Correspondingly,
and passed on from generation to generation; but that the reason the dominance of the concept of rule tends
would seem to be a claim about human nature—–that to obscure beginning is not that beginning is diamet-
is, about the essential properties that mark us off as rically opposed to the phenomena conventionally as-
beings of a certain kind, rather than the basic structures sociated with rule, because nothing about beginning
of our existence, which are not in us. Conversely, if we requires a break with the terms of an existing order,
incline toward a less literal reading of the passage from or resistance to regularity as such. Rather, the concept
Augustine, matters are not much better. If Arendt sim- of rule obscures beginning by blocking this posture of
ply means that the biblical account of creation is a vivid practical attunement; and it can do so in more than
metaphor which figures the subsequent birth of each one way. By teaching us to associate phenomena such
individual human being, and if she means, in turn, that as regularity and continuity with hierarchical relations
the phenomenon of beginning as manifest in action is of command and obedience, the idea of rule can en-
like both of these sorts of “birth,” then “natality” would courage the sort of withdrawal from practical engage-
seem to be little more than an analogy, useful, perhaps, ment that is required to maintain the illusion of mastery
for drawing attention to a certain human capacity, but
not a condition of anything. 14 This point is suggested by Bowen-Moore (1989), who says that
There is another possibility, however. If, as I have “man and temporality are affirmed by the miracle of birth”; but she
suggested, the phenomenon of action as beginning more often stresses the opposite thought, that beginning involves the
turns not on the degree of qualitative difference be- insertion of a human being into an already-existing “time continuum”
(22–23).
tween one state of affairs and its predecessor, but rather 15 As others have shown, we can also understand the relationship of
on the irreducible further difference introduced by the beginning to birth in Arendt by seeing “birth” as the paradigmatic
happening, the actuality, of every event, then to call case of an “event” to which the actor responds: as Arendt (1958) says,
in action we “confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our
original physical appearance” (176). On this view, as Collin (1999)
12 This seems close to what Stanley Cavell (1987) means by “present-
emphasizes, the importance of the moment of birth lies not in its
ness” (118–19). On the “event” as involving a “strange coincidence” association with a spontaneous “creation” but in its exemplification
of expectation and surprise, see Dastur 2000. of the givenness to which action is always a response (106; see also
13 Arendt 1958, 177; Arendt 1968, 167; 1994, 321. Durst 2004).

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(Arendt 1958, 222–23). However, the same background will, is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes
assumption of a close connection between subordina- about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in
tion and regularity can equally well inform democratic doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and
critiques of rule, leading us to embrace a countervail- since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified,
ing commitment to openness and interruption—–which, delight necessarily follows. . . . Thus, nothing acts unless [by
acting] it makes patent its latent self (Arendt 1958, 175).
however, we seem to be tragically bound to violate
every time we make a decision, indeed every time we In a recent study of Arendt, Susannah Gottlieb has
move in one direction rather than in another, and which begun to unpack the meaning of these epigraphs, and of
can therefore produce paralysis. the passage from Dante in particular. Noting the irony
Still, all this leaves us with some unanswered ques- involved in Arendt’s use of a passage drawn from a
tions about Arendt’s conception of beginning. The philosophical defense of universal monarchy, Gottlieb
source of the eruptiveness of beginning in Arendt’s (2003) brilliantly tracks the ways in which Arendt turns
sense lies in what I called “our attunement” to Dante’s passage into “a plea for a nonmonarchial pol-
events—–but this phrase glosses over some difficulties itics,” a transformation that, she observes, turns on a
too quickly. Whose “attunement”? What is attune- distinctive translation of Dante’s “explicare” as well as
ment, anyway? Does this just mean that something is a a mistranslation of the crucial last sentence (163). Yet
beginning if the person who undertakes it thinks it is? there are further layers of significance in this epigraph
Or if he or she has some other kind of mental state in that Gottlieb leaves unexplored. One of these comes
relation to other events in the world? These answers into view when we notice the importance of the concept
might seem to constitute a way to deal with the formal of rule in Dante’s work. Although he uses a variety
problem about the nature of the category of “action” of other terms to refer to political authority, includ-
that I bracketed earlier: perhaps Arendt’s apparent ing monarchia, imperium, regnum, and related words,
hesitation between an inclusive use of that category, he also frequently calls the monarch princeps and his
in which every instance of activity can be seen from the rule principatus, which suggests a connection between
perspective of action, and a restrictive use of that cate- monarchy and the “principle,” principium, of human-
gory, in which action names something we are in danger ity (Dante, De Monarchia 1.2 [1998]). Indeed, Dante’s
of losing, can be resolved by thinking of action as an defense of monarchy rests on his claim that a single, uni-
attitude or stance that is available to be taken toward versal princeps is uniquely able to produce peace, which
any activity, but which we do not necessarily always is the prerequisite of the fulfillment of the principium
take up. The turn to the difference between possibility of humankind. Moreover, unlike many other terms for
and actuality in this idea is right, but the implicit intel- political authority, princip- words—–which were used
lectualism is misleading, to the extent that it suggests to render archê and related terms in medieval Latin
either that it is an actor’s mental states that determine translations of Greek texts—–also bear some of the
whether his or her activity counts as action, and also to same semantic complexity that Arendt finds in archê
the extent that it suggests that the recovery of action and archein: princeps can also mean first in time; and
might simply be a matter of theoretical reflection, of both principatus and, more commonly, principium can
seeing what we are always already doing as action in a refer to a beginning or origin (Lewis and Short 1879).16
way that leaves the shape of our activity untouched. To Against this background, it seems plausible to treat
see why, to develop a fuller account of what it is that Arendt’s brief but rich engagement with Dante as an
makes a beginning a beginning, and to prepare the way extension of her critical engagement with the ideas of
for a return to democratic theory, we need to go back rule and beginning.
to Arendt’s text, approaching the problem this time via Another layer of significance in the epigraph
the intersection between the ideas of action and rule. becomes visible when we attend to the role of
Aristotle in the first book of De Monarchia, and in
particular to Dante’s use of categories drawn from
ACTION AND RULE: ARENDT’S DANTE Aristotle’s philosophy. Dante’s inquiry into the prin-
The chapter on action in The Human Condition begins ciple of humankind takes the form of an investi-
with two epigraphs. The first, from Isak Dinesen, reads: gation of humankind’s highest power (potentia); the
“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story principle—–that is, for Dante, the goal or end—–of hu-
or tell a story about them.” The second, from the first manity is to actualize this potential (actuare, also re-
book of Dante’s De Monarchia, is printed first in Latin ducere de potentia in actum, “reduce” from potential
and then in Arendt’s own English translation: to act; 1.4.1, 1.3.8 [1998]). Among the functions of the
monarch is to “dispose” (disponere) humankind rightly
Nam in omni actione principaliter intenditur ab agente, for this task, which involves a kind of arrangement
sive necessitate naturae sive voluntarie agat, propriam and ordering of humanity that strengthens certain hu-
similitudinem explicare; unde fit quod omne agens, in man potentials (and weakens others)—–for instance, by
quantum huiusmodi, delectatur, quia, cum omne quod est intensifying the power of justice and minimizing the
appetat suum esse, ac in agendo agentis esse modammodo power of greed (1.11, 1.13 [1998]). And the passage
amplietur, sequitur de necessitate delectatio. . . . Nihil igitur
agit nisi tale existens quale patiens fieri debet.
For in every action what is primarily intended by the 16 For Arendt’s recovery of the language of “principle” see, for
doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free example, 1968, 152.

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that Arendt uses as her epigraph is drawn from that qualities which are to be communicated to the thing
section of De Monarchia in which Dante argues that the acted upon” (Dante 1.13.3 [1996]); and Kay’s transla-
monarch is best able to dispose others well in this way tion reads “nothing acts unless it is already what the
(1.13.1–3 [1998])—–an argument that turns explicitly on patient ought to become” (Dante 1.13.3 [1998]). What,
a citation of Aristotle’s account of potentiality and exactly, has Arendt done? Because the “patient” or
actuality (dunamis and energeia) in the Metaphysics. the “thing acted upon” is the patiens, Gottlieb (2003)
Perhaps, then, Arendt’s use of Dante is also tied to concludes that Arendt has transformed “patiens” into
her own, distinctive use of Aristotle’s metaphysical vo- “patent” by “subtracting an i” (162). This cannot be
cabulary in the chapter on action—–for instance, in her right, however, for it leaves us with no plausible ac-
account of the relationship between power (dunamis) count of where Arendt finds “latent” in this sentence,
and activity (energeia; Arendt 1958, 199–206 and or of what she would mean by that word. It seems
passim). more likely that Arendt has read “existere” as “to
Gottlieb’s reading of Arendt’s epigraph begins with make patent,” and “patiens” as “the latent self,” in
an observation about her translation of Dante’s “expli- which case her crucial departure from Dante would
care” in the phrase “propriam similitudinem explicare,” lie not in dropping an “i” but in tying existens and pa-
which Arendt renders as “the disclosure of his own im- tiens to the same subject, rather than treating patiens
age.” Gottlieb (2003) writes that “explicare (‘uncoiling’ as the separate recipient of the actor’s action. (From
or ‘unfolding’) can characterize a purely internal two subjects to one: it is Arendt, notice, who is letting
occurrence—–and this is indeed the direction of Dante’s herself be absorbed into the question of the agent’s
thought as he seeks to justify the institution of monar- self-relation—–but sometimes it may be more effective
chy”; for this reason, Gottlieb argues, Arendt’s transla- to approach plurality indirectly.)
tion of explicare as “disclosure” shatters Dante’s solip- The first part of this hypothesis is plausible enough,
sism, highlighting the fact of plurality, the existence of for exsistere can mean to be, but also to emerge, ap-
others to whom the agent’s disclosure is directed (162). pear, or be made manifest; and it would be no surprise
At first glance, the suggestion that Dante’s analysis for Arendt, the student of Heidegger, to stress these
is “entirely absorbed with the relation of the agent to latter senses.18 Moreover, both parts of the hypothesis
itself” might seem to be mistaken: after all, in this chap- receive some support and elaboration later in Arendt’s
ter of the Monarchia, Dante is concerned precisely with discussion of action, when she says that “the meaning
the power of the monarch to shape and dispose others, of the last sentence of the Dante quotation at the head
and he has already characterized humanity as a “mul- of this chapter,” which “defies translation,” is as fol-
titude”; correspondingly, Dante’s translators render lows: “The human sense of reality demands that men
“propriam similitudinem explicare” as to “reproduce” actualize the sheer passive givenness of their being, not
or “replicate its own likeness.”17 But Gottlieb’s point is, in order to change it but in order to make articulate and
presumably, that this posture—–not so much total self- call into full existence what otherwise they would have
absorption as infinite self-propagation—–doesn’t really to suffer passively anyhow” (Arendt 1958, 208).Here,
count as a relation to others. There is no acknowl- Arendt unpacks “the latent self” into an even richer
edgment of separateness here—–not even in the term notion, “what one has to suffer passively anyhow”;
“multitude,” which has a very different meaning in the and that phrase is identifiably a rendering—–albeit a
medieval Aristotelian tradition than it does for contem- misrendering, ungrammatical and unmoored from the
porary radical democrats. As Richard Kay observes, in context of Dante’s words—–of tale . . . quale patiens fieri
that tradition multitudo “signifies that which can be debere.
divided ‘according to its potency’ into discontinuous Reading Arendt’s mistranslation this way has a chain
parts,” that is, something that cannot realize its full po- of important consequences. The first is that it clarifies
tential except as a functionally differentiated but inter- what Arendt means here by “the latent self.” When
locking and integrated plurality (Dante 1998, 19 n. 5). Arendt’s Dante says that “nothing acts unless [by act-
This plurality is merely the effect of the self-division ing] it makes patent its latent self,” it is tempting to
of the one; correspondingly, the multitude is best dis- think of this as a kind of unveiling: the identity of the
posed when—–through subjection to a monarch—–it ap- self rests, fully formed but unseen, under the cover
proximates the unity of God, for “the whole universe of darkness, until the actor steps into the light of the
is nothing else than a sort of footprint of the divine public, putting his persona—–carefully crafted back in
goodness” (1.8.2 [1998]). the private workshop—–on public display. Yet Arendt’s
Gottlieb then goes on to discuss the rendering of the own comments about the “non-sovereign” character
last sentence of the epigraph, “nihil igitur agit nisi tale of action belie this reading.“Nobody knows whom he
existens quale patiens fieri debet,” which Arendt trans- reveals when he discloses himself in deed and word,”
lates as “thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes she says (Arendt 1958, 180): and this is because this
patent its latent self.” As Gottlieb (2003) notes, and as
the context indicates, this is evidently a mistranslation
18 As Shadi Bartsch has pointed out to me, on this reading Arendt
(162); Shaw’s edition has “nothing acts unless it has the
is also mistranslating exsistere by treating it as a transitive verb; but
this, too, seems like a plausible mistranslation to ascribe to her, since
17 For “multitude,” see Dante 1998, 1.3.8; “reproduce” is Shaw’s one way to read her larger philosophical point is that the kind of
translation of explicare (Dante 1996); “replicate,” Kay’s (Dante “existence” involved in acting is not self-contained but involves a
1998). practical relation to circumstances and events.

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The Rule of the People February 2006

“who” is formed in the crucible of disclosure itself, tunement to its character as an irrevocable event, which
where it is shaped by the unpredictable reactions it also means: as an occasion for response. This suggests
provokes; the “unchangeable identity of the person” that the status of being a beginning is not acontextual:
only comes into being as such in retrospect, once an beginnings are always beginnings for some agent or
actor’s life “has come to its end” (193; see also 233– agents; specifically, for those from whom the beginning
34). Does this mean, then, that the “latent self” in this calls for a response. Now, however, Arendt has also
epigraph is merely the symptom of a kind of ideological told us that what it means to act is to “call into full
misrecognition, the falsely naturalized sediment of a existence” something that one would otherwise merely
series of performatives, which good Arendtian political suffer passively. To do that, it would seem, is precisely
actors should attempt to expose as such and to resist to be attuned to the character of this latent stuff as a set
(Honig 1992, 1993)? Yes and no: sometimes the rhythm of irrevocable events and an occasion for action. There
of Arendtian beginning may involve making spaces for is no way to undo what has been done, no way not to
subversion of existing norms, or for the creation of suffer it—–but you can do more than merely suffer it:
something that looks substantially different from what you can take it as your point of departure. You can,
has preceded it, but, as we have seen, such unruliness in short, begin. Taking these two points together: what
isn’t constitutive of what it means to be engaged in makes an act an instance of beginning? That, against
action on Arendt’s account; and anyway Arendt’s talk its background, someone begins. What makes that a
of “making patent,” “making articulate,” and “calling beginning? That it becomes an occasion to begin—–and
into full existence” do not fit well with the thought that so on.
“the latent self” is a misrecognition to be unmasked. This temporal structure has several crucial implica-
The phrase “what otherwise they would have to tions. Notice, first, that it immediately does away with
suffer passively anyhow,” however, suggests another the notion that the question of whether an instance of
possibility, one that lies outside this all-too-familiar di- activity is a beginning might be decided by the attitude
chotomy between the self as settled in advance and the or mental state of its agent. To the contrary, whether
self, if it can still be called that, as in perpetual flux. It your activity is a beginning is not wholly under your
suggests that what Arendt calls the latent self is not an control: it is, instead, a matter of the character of the
identity, real or illusory: instead, it is action’s point of responses and reactions it provokes (or fails to pro-
departure, the constellation of circumstances, events, voke) in you and others. In this sense, the structure
and forces to which each new act is a response. To say of intersubjective vulnerability that Arendt discusses
that this is not a real identity is to say that action, in in The Human Condition under such rubrics as the
responding to such a point of departure, always does “boundlessness” and “unpredictability” of action ap-
more than merely reveal an always already established plies to more than just individual instances of action:
character; to say that it is not an illusory identity is to say it also applies to the very status of action as action.
that this point of departure cannot be unmasked—–to do Second, this also suggests that the being of beginnings
that would be like pulling oneself out of that matrix in is a public matter—–not in the sense that it is to be deci-
which there are occasions to do things, in which acting ded by rational-critical discourse, nor in the sense that
makes sense at all. Of course, because circumstances, it is a question of the common good rather than the
events, and forces are usually things that we regard as private interest, nor in the sense that it is involves the
external to the self, it may seem problematic to say exposure of a hidden truth—–but simply in the sense
that they are among the self’s constituents: doing so that it is a worldly phenomenon, which only exists in
may seem to still seem to dissolve the self into its sur- the sometimes face-to-face, sometimes impersonal, but
roundings. Yet it is important to notice that Arendt’s always uncertain circulation of address and response
account of the latent self is not reductive in this way: (Warner 2002). Third, it also indicates that the being
for her, we might say, the latent self exists at—–indeed, of a beginning is actually not best conceived as a state.
it is—–the intersection between these worldly happen- Action, understood as beginning, is an ongoing activ-
ings and circumstances, on the one hand, and the bi- ity whose future is uncertain—–and indeed whose past
ologically individuated human beings for whom they is in a certain sense uncertain as well, insofar as the
are meaningful, whose bodily trajectories from birth to character of one act as a beginning hangs on its future
death serve as the threads that organize this latent stuff reception. For this reason it might be better to speak of
into selves and make it possible to speak intelligibly of action as something that is, at various times and places,
an individual actor’s initiatory response to the circum- coming into being or passing away, as the intensity of
stances and events with which he or she is confronted responsiveness in a space of potential circulation waxes
(and which will turn out to have made up part of the and wanes, but which never simply or definitively is.
story of who he or she is). We are now in a position to return to the interpretive
All of this suggests that there is a close connection problem deferred earlier, about the curious difficulty
between Arendt’s account of the “latent” self, that in in knowing whether Arendt means concepts like action
relation to which one is patiens, on the one hand, and and beginning to pick out a specific subset of human
the idea of the event that I spelled out earlier, on the activity, or to point to a dimension of significance that
other. Yet there is also a subtle temporal twist here. might be found in any instance of human activity. This
Recall that what makes a beginning a beginning for difficulty, recall, is closely related to the trouble readers
Arendt, what lends it its eruptiveness, is not its degree of Arendt often have in finding a suitable criterion in
of departure from what preceded it, but rather our at- her work by which to decide whether an example of

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human activity counts as action. We should now be able multitude (as the one who disposes) and the one who
to identify some of the sources of this trouble. First, it defines its potentiality (as the embodiment of the telos
may sometimes be the result of a focus on relatively of human beings).
individualized examples of activity, abstracted from the By contrast, Arendt’s mistranslation of Dante is a
sequences of occasion and response in which they are perfect miniature of her critique of the concept of rule
embedded. Such abstraction makes the examples more in the philosophical tradition. Dante’s separation of the
manageable, but it also extracts them from the con- monarch from the multitude—–expressed in the con-
texts in relation to which Arendt’s account of action as ventional translation of the crucial sentence, in which
beginning makes sense: trying to decide whether this existens and patiens relate to two separate subjects—–is
instance of activity, on its own, is a beginning is like an example of the breakdown of the original interde-
trying to decide whether this instance of me flexing my pendence between beginner and responder, and of the
knee, on its own, is running. Second, this difficulty is transformation of that relationship into the Herrschaft
also the result of trying to decide whether an instance exercised by one who already knows what is to be done
of activity is or is not a beginning, for beginning, as (who is always already actual) over one who obeys
we have seen, isn’t a finally settled property, but a (who has to be brought from potentiality to actual-
possibility we actualize—–though never completely—–by ity). In collapsing existens and patiens back into the
responding to it. From the stance of the classifier, who “patent” and “latent” selves of a single agent—–the
sorts specimens of activity into categories, action and action one undertakes, and the constellation of irre-
beginning are bound to seem paradoxical. vocable events within which, and in response to which,
Together, these features of Arendt’s account of be- one takes it—–Arendt peremptorily denies the claim
ginning shed light on her transformative appropriation of any agent to be a full embodiment, always already
of Dante. As I indicated earlier, rule, on Dante’s ac- actualized, of human potentiality. In so doing, she also
count, is a matter of the realization of the highest pos- tacitly rejects the reading of Aristotle on which Dante
sibility of human beings through their “disposition” by relies. Whereas Dante tends to understand energeia as
a sovereign, who is himself already a maximal embod- actuality in the sense of a state of complete develop-
iment of the virtuous dispositions that remain merely ment or perfection, Arendt restores to that concept
possible—–latent—–in his subjects, and whose activity of its association with activity: as Aristotle also says, it is
disposition is a kind of reproduction of his own likeness because of the priority of energeia to dunamis that we
in those he governs. This is why the passage Arendt say that “it is thought impossible to be a builder if one
mistranslates is so crucial to Dante’s argument: “noth- has built nothing or a harpist if one has never played the
ing acts unless it is already what the patient ought to harp; for he who learns to play the harp learns to play
become.” Indeed, in the sentence immediately follow- by playing it, and all other learners do similarly” (Meta.
ing this—–which Arendt does not quote—–Dante adds 1049b, 30–32 [1984]).Here, as in the case of beginning,
the authority of Aristotle to his conclusion: “This is to be “actual” is not to have a certain set of qualities at
why the Philosopher says in the Metaphysics that ev- a particular time, nor is it to realize a possibility always
erything that is brought from potentiality into actu- already implanted in you. It is, instead, to be engaged
ality is produced by something similar to itself that in an activity, making and remaking (in ways at once
already exists in actuality; for if anything tried to act orderly and unruly) that activity and its possibilities as
otherwise, it would try in vain” (1.13.3 [1998]).19 The you proceed, and sustaining your attunement to the
passage to which Dante seems to be referring is part events that call for your response.
of Aristotle’s account of the various ways in which ac-
tuality, energeia, is prior to potentiality, dunamis. For
example, “the actual member of the species is prior to CONCLUSION: DEMOCRACY’S BEGINNING
the potential member of the same species,” and helps
to produce it: “man [is produced] by man, musician Although Hannah Arendt was not a democratic theo-
by musician.”20 Or again, in a slightly different sense, rist in the usual sense of the term—–indeed, her occa-
actuality is prior to potentiality in the sense that the sional remarks about the reality of democratic politics
actuality of a thing is its end, and the end, as that for in the twentieth century were often unflattering—–her
the sake of which the thing is, is prior to the thing critique of rule and her unorthodox interpretation of
qua potentiality: hence “animals do not see in order beginning have much to offer democratic theory, be-
that they may have sight, but have sight that they may cause they invite us to think differently about the na-
see” (Aristotle, Meta. 1050a7–11 [1984]). Dante here ture of the political activity we ascribe to “the people.”
translates such ideas about the priority of actuality into Different characterizations of this activity, as we have
a doctrine of hierarchical rule, treating the monarch as, seen, produce starkly different versions of the demo-
at once, the one who activates the potentiality of the cratic ideal: sometimes we imagine the people jointly
ruling themselves, in control of their own destinies,
free from subjection to alien forces or sinister inter-
19 Some editions have Dante quoting Aristotle’s Metaphysics
ests; at other times we imagine the people insurgent,
1049b24–2 (1984), for example Dante 1996; Kay (Dante 1998, 70–71 rising up in opposition to a regime or order, and so
n. 6) suggests that Dante was merely paraphrasing Aristotle.
20 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1049b19–20, 25 (1984). The following dis- displaying the irreducibility of popular power to a
cussion is especially indebted to conversations with Jill Frank and to fixed form. Arendt herself has been enlisted in sup-
Frank 2004. port of both sorts of democratic vision; yet from her

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The Rule of the People February 2006

perspective, I have suggested, these positions are contraction of the dimension of activity that concerns
equally problematic—–and not because of the distance Arendt; and they become particularly significant for
between them, but because of what they share. To con- democracy when they systematically characterize the
ceive of democratic politics as the rule of the people experience either of citizens generally or of a subset of
over itself is, she claims, to reduce it to a variation on citizens disproportionately.
monarchy, in which the “collective body” of the people To conceive of the impediments to democracy in
takes the place of the king (Arendt 1958, 221); to con- these terms is, crucially, to locate them in the mode of
ceive of it as the perpetual interruption or destabiliza- presence or appearance of events, and not merely in the
tion of order is merely to invert this picture of politics states or capacities of persons. In mainstream, regime-
as rule, reducing freedom to a matter of “liberation” oriented democratic theory, the failure of democratic
(1965, 142)—–in many circumstances a worthwhile aim, rule is often cast as a failure in or of the citizens who
but one that, when generalized into the defining fea- exercise democratic rule: for democratic government
ture of political action as such, seems to demand an to be genuinely autonomous self-government, the citi-
impossible escape from the contexts in which action zen body must form a “people” that possesses and dis-
is situated and which give it sense. Neither seeking a plays a general will, without lapsing into irrationality or
middle ground between these positions nor affirming partiality—–but the prior work of molding and forming
them as the poles of a constitutive paradox, Arendt that this requires may belie the autonomy it is supposed
instead and more radically draws our attention to a to produce (Keenan 2003; Honig 2001). Likewise, for
dimension of activity that they jointly obscure, one de- democratic critics of rule, genuinely democratic agency
fined not by the opposition between determination and lies in a power of spontaneous interruption that needs
undertermined spontaneity, but by the complementar- somehow to be awakened or instilled in those who
ity between events and the responses they occasion, are subject to the controlling force of regimes—–but
provoke, or summon.21 the very nature of spontaneity so conceived makes it
What does this view of political activity mean for difficult in principle to locate or produce. Both of these
our understanding of democratic politics? To begin approaches, however, render it difficult to understand
with, it highlights a distinctive way in which demo- how democratic activity might be generated when or
cratic political activity can be obstructed or impeded, where it is weak or absent, for they imagine that what
thereby providing political theorists and actors with a makes action democratic is a one or another kind of
new target for, and language of, democratic critique. purity at its origin. Arendt’s account of beginning, by
We are used to thinking of the impediments to democ- contrast, shows us that action, as a response to events,
racy as, on the one hand, forces that interfere with is, you might say, always a second step rather than a
the autonomous self-determination of the people, or, first: if we can never quite lose our capacity to act
on the other hand, forces that constrict the space of altogether (Arendt 1958, 323; Pitkin 1998, 282), this
underdetermination in which popular action can oper- is because there never ceases to be a fund of doings
ate, for instance by channeling it into a constitutional and happenings—–beginnings—–in the world to which
form. From an Arendtian perspective, however, the we might respond.22 Arendt thus replaces the unan-
most fundamental threat to democratic political ac- swerable question of how to generate something (au-
tivity lies in the loss of responsiveness to events: the tonomy, spontaneity) from nothing (heteronomy, de-
erosion of the contexts in which action makes sense. termination) with the more tractable question of how
To experience an event—–if “experience” is the right to sustain, intensify, and democratize the beginnings
word—–as irrelevant; to have it be imperceptibly dis- with which we are already confronted; and that is less
tant (whether at a distance of one mile or a thousand); a question about the qualities or virtues of persons
for it to signify for only as an observation or datum, than about the worldly intersections among persons, or
made from a posture of scientific disengagement; for between persons and the happenings they encounter,
it to be imperceptibly close, so much the medium of or fail to.
your being that it never occurs to you that it might be Importantly, identifying breakdowns of the nexus of
something to which you could respond; to feel it as a event and response is not a matter of the top-down
force that rips up, or rips you out of, the contexts in application of an authoritative philosophical criterion:
which you might be able to imagine how to respond; to just as, for Arendt, the status of human activity as
experience an event generically, as something signifi- “action” cannot be apprehended from the disengaged
cant for you only insofar as you belong to a category stance of the classifier, the significance of events is also
or type, which does not engage you as the locus of a a matter of judgment, and, often enough, a matter for
separate, as-yet-unfinished life: these are signs of the dispute, undertaken within the horizons of practical

21 Insofar as our neglect of this dimension of activity is itself part 22 As Pitkin (1998) puts it, “the only place to begin is where we are,
of the legacy of the concept of rule and of the relationships of and there are a hundred ways of beginning” (283). Perhaps because
subordination it has been employed to rationalize, Arendt’s (1958) Pitkin casts beginning as what I have called a “first” step rather than
effort to recover this distinctive perspective on activity is already as a “response,” however, her account of Arendtian action sometimes
antihierarchical and egalitarian in spirit: hence her insistence that sounds like an invocation of spontaneity: “if you wait for your own
the “attempt to replace acting with making is manifest in the whole action to befall you, it will not; you have to just do it” (284), and “once
body of arguments against ‘democracy,’ which, the more consistently we do begin . . . we may find others already under way” (283). Yet it
and better reasoned it is, will turn into an argument against the is also because things—–events—–befall us, and because we encounter
essentials of politics” (220). others already under way, that we have occasions and ways to begin.

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engagement. Some of the most important work of of mainstream accounts of democracy as a form of
democratic politics thus consists in the interpretation rule, Arendt’s invocation of the ward system and coun-
of particular events; that is, in the re-presentation of cil movement would look like a call—–perhaps nostal-
happenings that, although they may or may not be giac and unrealistic—–for a return to direct popular
widely known as matters of fact, are not (as) widely decision-making. For much radical democatic theory,
experienced as practically significant. This does not the wards would seem instead to be mechanisms of
mean, however, that theoretical reflection has no role popular unruliness: Arendt herself notes that Jefferson
to play here. The patterns of engagement and respon- saw wards as a “non-violent alternative” to revolu-
siveness we confront are not merely accidental: they tion (250). Recall, however, that in On Revolution,
are, in part, the effects of social and political practices Arendt claims that the American revolutionaries failed
and institutions, which structure and mediate people’s to comprehend the nature of their own experiences,
experiences of the world. In addition to (and often in in part because they “channelled” those experiences
conjunction with) the public interpretation of partic- “into concepts that had just been vacated” (155)—–a
ular events, then, the problem of democratic political phrase that should remind us of Lefort’s story of demo-
activity can be engaged at a higher level of generality, cratic revolution as an evacuation of the “place of
by asking how these practices and institutions expose us power.” For Arendt, the paradoxes in which the revo-
to the imperatives of events or render them practically lutionaries came to feel themselves caught—–including
inert. This is in part a question of the responsiveness especially the apparently intractable conflict between
institutions foster or suppress toward the work they permanence and novelty, exemplified by Jefferson’s
themselves perform: institutions may be more or less own oscillation from an “identification of action with
peremptory, more or less dependent for their successful rebellion” to an “identification with founding anew and
operation upon their insulation from the engagement, building up” (234)—–are the symptoms of a “fallacy” in
whether cooperative or critical, of those whom they af- their thought that “becloud[ed]” their understanding
fect.23 Yet practices and institutions—–and not just insti- of action (133). They failed to take the measure of
tutions with formalized decision-making powers—–also the fact that their own revolutionary activity, although
have much wider consequences for the shape of po- not determined in advance, had not appeared out of
litical activity. The contours of the built environment, nowhere: sensitized to the abuses of Crown and Parlia-
the aesthetics of print, televisual, and electronic media; ment, they had set out to restore their traditional lib-
the discursive forms through which events are distin- erties but found themselves, in response both to events
guished, measured, scaled, organized, and presented; and to the “charms” they discovered in action itself,
the practices of representation and patterns of identi- doing far more than they had intended (33, 28–29, 37).
fication that make some events but not others “our” If, as Arendt suggests, the ward system represents an
business: these are among the mechanisms of what unfollowed route that might have helped to preserve
Susan Bickford calls “attention orientation,” which political freedom, this is neither because the wards
may heighten or diminish responsiveness to events as would have institutionalized popular sovereignty nor
Arendt understands it.24 They are properly objects of because they would have generated rebelliousness, but
democratic criticism not because they produce order because they would have organized political experi-
and and stability but—–in keeping with Arendt’s dis- ence so as to sustain the same kind of attunement to
tinctive critique of rule—–just insofar as they predicate events that had drawn the revolutionaries into action,
the order and stability they produce on the narrowing and along its path.
of some or all citizens’ practical horizons.
We can see an example of this way of thinking
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