Political philosophy
Hannah Arendt
1906 – 1975
Action is unpredictable and irreversible, and its remedies are not control but promise and forgiveness. A sober account of what shaping can and cannot claim.
Read alongside: Shape
- Start with
- The Human Condition (1958)
- Where they resist the book
- Arendt distinguishes action sharply from work and labour, and would resist most of what organisations call action.
Works worth the time
The Human Condition · 1958
Action as unpredictable and irreversible, with promise and forgiveness as its only remedies.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press ↗Read further
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hannah Arendt ↗
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Where Arendt appears
Judgement is a virtue, not a procedure.
Aristotle's phronesis is practical wisdom: knowing what this situation asks, which no rule can supply in advance. Arendt insists that action is unpredictable and irreversible, and that its remedy is not control but promise and forgiveness. MacIntyre supplies the word the book leans on — practice, with standards internal to it.