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Hannah Arendt's Critique of Violence

University of Birmingham, c.j.finlay{at}bham.ac.uk

This article critiques the idea of instrumental justification for violent means seen in Hannah Arendt's writings. A central element in Arendt's argument against theorists like Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon in On Violence is the distinction between instrumental justifications and approaches emphasizing the `legitimacy' of violence or its intrinsic value. This doesn't really do the work Arendt needs it to in relation to rival theories. The true distinctiveness of Arendt's view is seen when we turn to On Revolution and resituate the later arguments of On Violence in the context of her ideas about the separation between revolution and liberation. Arendt's commitment to the American discovery in revolutionary politics of a means that needs no further ends to justify it permits a rereading of her conception of liberation as an attempt to envisage a violence that, while tactically instrumental, is at the same time politically non-instrumental. But while Arendt's view is distinct, the article also highlights important thematic continuities with the writings of Sorel and Walter Benjamin.

Key Words: Hannah Arendt • Walter Benjamin • critique of violence • Frantz Fanon • revolution • Georges Sorel • violence

Thesis Eleven, Vol. 97, No. 1, 26-45 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0725513608101907


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