Article

Hannah Arendt's Concept of 'Natality'
and the Vision of Political Solidarity
as an 'On-going Process'

Terukazu Morikawa
The word 'solidarity' seems to be too ambiguous to be treated as atheoretical concept. Solidarity in its general usage means a form of interdependence and reciprocity between one person or group of people
and another, so it can accommodate the rhetoric of any person orgroup in various concerns and contexts1. We can talk about 'social solidarity', 'national solidarity' or 'human solidarity', and we can say that
'we feel solidarity'; 'we display solidarity' and 'we have a sense of solidarity'; but we can never say exactly what 'it' is. What I propose in thefollowing is not an attempt to give a strict definition to the concept ofThis paper is a slightly expanded version of a presentation I gave at a session in the Annual Meeting of Western Political Science Association (Apr.
3th 2010, San Francisco). I'm very grateful to Jeremy Arnold, Nobutaka
Otobe, and especially Mabel Wong for comments and suggestions on thispaper.
１ As a helpful attempt to theorize political solidarity, see Scholz, Sally J., Political Solidarity, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Scholz classifies three types of solidarity: social, civic, and political. 'Social solidarity' isconnected with a social group that is based on shared interests or given
identities (like a family, a club, an ethnic group, etc.). 'Civic solidarity' isconnected with a political state in which people are united under sharedmoral obligations. The third form of solidarity which Scholz distinguishes
from these two and calls 'political solidarity' is a unity that arises out of aconscious commitment to fight a perceived injustice.
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65−1･2− 53Articlesolidarity but to display a perspective which urges us to see the fruitfulinsight of political solidarity as an on-going process in terms of Hannah Arendt's concept of 'natality'. For Arendt, "natality" is "the central
category of political [thought]" because politics has to do with "thetask to provide and preserve the world for, to foresee and reckon with,the constant influx of newcomers who are born into the world as
strangers"2 . The kernel of her concept of natality is the vision thathuman beings come into the world "as strangers". What this suggests
is that despite the elasticity of her usage of 'solidarity', nonethelessframe an Arendtian political solidarity within the mode of humanbirth. Natality discloses, as I will argue, a fruitful vision on politicalsolidarity that is not the consequence of identification based on the existing community but an unpredictable event which comes into birthamong strangers.
1.
In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty argues thatsolidarity is one of the vocabularies that have been "de-theologized andde-philosophized" in the contemporary secularized societies. There is"nothing deeper than contingent historical circumstance", thus weshould not "want something which stands beyond history and institutions". For Rorty, solidarity should not be regarded as a universal bondwhich encompasses the human race but as the feelings of similarities
and the sense of identity which have developed in a particular historicalcommunity: "[M] orally as well as politically, our sense of solidarity isstrongest when those with whom solidarity is expressed are thought ofas 'one of us', where 'us' means something smaller and more local thanthe human race"3 . These claims may be relevant in concrete political２
３Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago U. P., 1958, p.9 (emphasis
added) -hereafter cited as HC.
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge U. P., 1989,
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as an 'On-going Process'situations, for example, in a country where a statesman and his collaborators try to build a new national health insurance system. Other
theorists such as David Miller puts an emphasis on the crucial importance of national solidarity for social policies and redistribution of
wealth in the welfare state because it makes people feel the ethical duties owed to their fellow citizens4. Although Rorty identifies the rangeof 'us' with the range of a nation-state, the specific kind of national
solidarity that he advocates is not, in his view, "incompatible with urging that we try to extend our sense of 'we' to people whom we have previously thought of as 'they'" because 'we' are 'liberals' who "are moreafraid of being cruel than of anything else". The ethnocentrism of "wetwentieth-century liberals" (or "Americans") is so decent and moderatethat it can cultivate "the ability to see more and more traditional differences […] as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation-the ability to think of people wildly
different from ourselves as included in the range of 'us'"5.
It sounds good. Rorty's claims are persuasive at least in the level ofordinary common sense (say, most of us, whether the westerns or not,wish to live in a liberal and democratic nation rather than a nation
placed under the tyrannic rule of a cruel dictator). But the conceptionof political solidarity that Rorty demonstrates lacks an element indispensable to politics: that is, practice or action. As Darren Walhof
points out, Rorty reduces solidarity to the result of recognition of similarities and differences. He never relates the process of mutual recognition among peoples to actual practices in concrete situations6 . In his

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p.189, 191
David Miller, On Nationality, Oxford U. P., 1995
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p.192. Rorty's liberal ethnocentrism
might be compatible with the Habermasian move toward a "consensus utopia" (Leib, Ethan J., "Rorty's New School of American Pride: The Constellation of Contestation and Consensus", Polity, XXXVI-2, 2004, p.186).
Darren R. Walhof, "Friendship, Otherness, and Gadamer's Politics of Solidarity", Political Theory, XXXIV-5, 2006, p.573-5; see also, Stephan K.
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Articlevision, 'we liberals' need to do nothing actual to expand 'our sense of us'
since it is tied with the liberal-democratic institutions which might be
the consequence of historical contingency but are, for Rorty, nevertheless the best among all in the contemporary world. He never puts "thevery belief in the superiority of the liberal way of life" into questionand he assumes as if "through economic growth and the right kind of'sentimental education' a universal consensus could be built around liberal institutions"7. According to Rorty, what 'we liberals' have to do in
the public-political sphere is just to support the liberal institutions
which strengthen 'our sense of us' and allow us to cultivate our decent
sentiments in the private realm. If those who want to raise a radical
doubt to the rightfulness of liberal principles and institutions likeNietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault, they should "privatize their projects" and "view them as irrelevant to politics" (p.197)8. Such an accountof the distinction between the public and private, as Bonnie Honig suggests, seems to reveal Rorty's anxiety that people who are not in therange of 'us' would do damage to our liberal way of life9. It seems thatin spite of his full confidence in his great liberal society Rorty curiously fears the disruptive intrusion of someone foreign or strange intoit. He repeatedly claims that 'we liberals' should "expand our sense of'us'" in order to "create a more expansive sense of solidarity". For him
the process to expand the sense of solidarity is always the process to include 'them', as he describes in a Whitmanian fashion, the process of"inclusion among 'us' of the family in the next cave, then of the tribe
across the river, then of the tribal confederation beyond the moun-

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９White, Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory, Princeton U. P., 2000, p.15-7
Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, Verso, 2000, p.67
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p.192. See also, Rorty, Achieving Our
Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Harvard U. P.,
1998, p.96
Bonnie Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner, Princeton U. P., 2001, p.118f;
see also, Raymond Geuss, "Richard Rorty at Princeton: Personal Recollections", in Politics and the Imagination, Princeton U. P., 2010
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as an 'On-going Process'tains, then of the unbelievers beyond the seas". In such a process of inclusion, Rorty asserts, "we should stay on the lookout for marginalized
people−people whom we still instinctively think of as 'they' rather
than 'us'". In his view of the world, 'we twentieth-century liberals' always occupy the position to look 'them' out, whereas 'they' remain to belooked out. Such a unilateral perspective from 'us' to 'them' lets us keep"the ethnocentrism of a 'we' ('we liberals') which is dedicated to enlarging itself"10, but also, and perhaps more carefully, causes us to overlook
the essential moment of politics, that is, the moment that they comeunto us, look upon us and call out to us.
As an alternative to Rorty's conception of solidarity, I turn to
Arendt's concept of natality in order to examine a different conceptualization of political solidarity. My attempt might sound curious toher critics who believe that Arendt admires ancient Greek city-states as
an ideal form of political community that distinguishes the public
realm from the private11. According to such a view, we can find only anarrow and exclusive sense of solidarity among elite warrior-citizens in
Arendt's writings. But Arendt, it should be noted, also argues that "theprinciple of freedom" and "the faculty of action" are "ontologicallyrooted" in "the fact of natality" which "Greek antiquity ignored" (HC:p.177, 247). We should not miss her critical evaluations of ancient
Greek city-state12; rather, we should attend to the term 'principle' thatis indispensable to grasping her theory of action. Arendt uses the term
for the Latin word 'principium' and the Greek word 'arch' which bothmean not only 'principle' but also 'beginning' (HC: p.177, 189; OR:
p.212f). It is noteworthy that she describes solidarity as a principle:"Terminologically speaking, solidarity is a principle that can inspireand guide action, compassion is one of the passions, and pity is a senti-

10 Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p.196, 198 (emphasis partly added).
11 Walhof, op.cit, p.587; Honig, op.cit, p.134f
12 See, Roy Tsao's excellent arguments in his "Arendt against Athens: Rereading The Human Condition", Political Theory, XXX-1, 2002.
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Articlement"13. According to Arendt, solidarity is not a matter of passion or
sentiment through which we identify with one another but a principlethat inspire us, each of whom is born into the world as a stranger, toact in concert.
2.
Arendt has repeatedly emphasized the kernel importance of humanbirth as a principle of political action by quoting the words of St.
Augustine on 'initium' (beginning) in all major works that she has
written since 195314 . This has, however, been disregarded by scholars
who insist that Arendt uncritically praises the classical polis and distinguishes the public realm for genuine politics from all spheres of private life. Such a reading is understandable to a certain extent; Arendt
definitely asserts the distinction between public and private and does
argue that things that belong to the family affairs are not public but
private: "the relationships between the members of a family" are "nonpolitical and even antipolitical" (HC: sec.7, p.54). Since a child's birth isunquestionably a matter of family, her insistence on natality as a principle of political action seems to be inconsistent and insignificant. Or,

13

Arendt, On Revolution, Penguin, 1963, p.89 (emphases added)-hereafter
cited as OR. Margaret Canovan notices the importance of Arendt's perspective that solidarity is a principle, though Canovan does not relate it to thehuman natality (Hannah Arendt: a Reinterpretation of her PoliticalThought, Cambridge U. P., 1992, p.177ff).
14 "Initium... ergo ut esset, creatus est homo, ante quem nullus fuit" (that there
be a beginning, man was created before whom there was nobody),
Augustine, The City of God, XII-21. The first appearance of this passage in
Arendt's text is in her short essay "Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form ofGovernment" (1953) which became a new epilogue of The Origins of Totalitarianism (its first edition was published in 1951). On detailed investigations of the genesis of her concept of natality during the early 1950s, seenote 17, and more Morikawa Terukazu, Arendt and the Beginning: Birth ofher Thought of Natality [Hajimari no Arendt: Shussei no Shiso no Tanjo],
Iwanami Shoten Publishers, Tokyo, 2010 (written in Japanese).
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as an 'On-going Process'the most that can be said of it is that it remains part of her personalfaith in the human capacity to renew and save the world from ruin15 orof her private belief the creation of something new ex nihilo, that is,"new beginnings out of nothing"16. I would like to contest these opinions
by questioning the absolutory private nature of the event of childbirth. Although the birth of a child occurs in the private realm, it nevertheless expresses the fundamental principle of action performed in
the public realm. I also argue that Arendt's intention behind her distinction between the private and public is less to substantially designate two separate spaces than it is to theoretically clarify two main
aspects of human life. Simply speaking, the public is something that is(should be) "seen and heard by everybody" while the private is something that is (should be) hidden from many people's eyes (HC: sec7,p.50).
Birthing and, it should be added, love belong to the private realm inthe sense that it is (generally speaking, should be) hidden from thepublic. The birth of a child is one of the private events that goes on between a few people behind closed doors. As Arendt puts it:
Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts,
the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is thechild, love's own product. The child, this in-between to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representativeof the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that

15

16James W. Bernauer, "The Faith of Hannah Arendt", ditto (ed.), Amor
Mundi: Explorations in the Faith and Thought of Hannah Arendt, Nijihoff,
1987, p.10; Luis Hinchman and Sandra Hinchman, "Existentialism Politicized: Arendt's Debt to Jaspers", ditto (ed.), Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays, SUNY, 1994, 169f
Martin Jay, "Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views", Partisan Review, XLV-3,
1978, P.351; see also, Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, Cornell U. Pr., 1993, p.80
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Articlethey will insert a new world into the existing world. Through thechild, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which theirlove had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result
and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, theend of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or betransformed into another mode of belonging together. Love, by itsvery nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its
rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the mostpowerful of all antipolitical human forces (HC: sec.33, p.242-italics
added).
Arendt reiterates her thesis of love in these passages: love is "killed, or
rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public" because of"its inherently worldlessness" (HC: sec.7, p.51f). Moreover, she declaresthat sexual love between two lovers is the most powerful force to isolate them from all public-political affairs. However, what lies implicit
in Arendt's description of love as the most privatized human relationship is an account of natality as a principle of action. What Arendt observes in the coming of a new child is not only the beginning of
someone new that has not existed but also the transformation of theexisting human relationship into a new, 'another mode of belonging together'. In other words, we should examine her concept of beginning
not only from the perspective of someone who inserts herself into theworld but also from the perspective of those who already exist and areforced to respond the introduction of the new. We should note thatArendt begins the fifth chapter of The Human Condition, 'Action', byfocusing on the child birth as a new beginning and further refers to action as a "second birth" in the opening section of fifth chapter (sec.24,
p.176). She also ends the chapter with the statement: "A child has beenborn unto us" (HC:247, emphases added)17.

17

Although Arendt mentions that these are "the few words with which theGospels announced their 'glad tidings'" (ibid), they are in fact the words in
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as an 'On-going Process'the Old Testament (Isaiah 9:6). Nevertheless, what she is referring to is not
a Hebrew prophecy but a stanza of Hndel's Messiah. In the letter to H. Blucher on May 18th 1952 from Munich, Arendt wrote: "Handel's Messiah by the
Munich Philharmonic;... The 'Hallelujah Chorus' is ringing in my ears. I realized for the first time how marvelous the 'Unto us a child is born' is.
Christianity did have its good sides" (Within Four Walls: The Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinlich Blucher:1936-1968, trans. by
Constantine, P., Harcourt Inc., 1996, p.175). Clearly Arendt accepts thephrase in question in the context of "Christianity". This impression seems
to make her confuse it with a passage of the Gospels in her book published
six years later.
We can find her reflection on Messiah in her notebook, Danktagebuch(May, 1952): "Unto us a child is born. The profound truth in this part of theoratorio of Christ.... Every new birth is a guarantee of this luck in theworld, a promise of revelation for those who are no longer beginning"(Danktagebuch: 1950 bis 1973, hrsg. Von Ursula Ludz und Ingeborg
Nordmann, Piper, 2003, S.208). What we should note here is that Arendt interprets the birth of 'a child' as 'all beginning (Aller Anfang)' and 'every
new birth (jede neue Geburt) ', in spite of the fact that 'a child' means no one
but Messiah in the original text (Messiah, no.11). I think that this uniqueinterpretation of Messiah has a close connection with her reading of the'initium' passage in City of God.
In the passage 'initum...', Augustine was dealing not with every birth butwith the creation of "the man", Adam, from whom the human race is descended. He wrote in the next chapter (XII, chap.22): God's intention is that"the human race might derive entirely from one man [ex homine uno]"(Loeb Classical Library, book IV, p.111). For Augustine, the point is undoubtedly to defend the Chistian concept of history whose origin is the creation of Adam by God: it has nothing to do with the element of 'every new
birth' as an ontological condition of human plurality. Arendt, in fact, criticizes the Christian concept to regard human being as a race derived fromone man, "ex uno homine" (Danktagebuch: S.70 (April, 1951)).
However, Arendt wrote in Danktagebuch, July 1953, that "Augustine's'initium' is the last and highest expression of the ancient concept of freedom" (S.405). In the following month, she wrote that "Augustine's word isthought of as Greek one, not as Hebrew. Human being comes into the world
as beginning" (p.423, cf. BPF: p.167). Moreover, Arendt, as we know, begins
to refer to the passage of 'initium' as the expression of the principle ofhuman freedom from the mid-50s on. In my opinion, her discovery of 'theprofound truth' of the phrase 'Unto us a child is born' on May 1952 inspired
her to interpret Augustine's 'initium' in her own way: just as 'a child' means
not Christ as a particular man but every child, 'initium' corresponds not tothe creation of Adam as 'uno homo' but to every new birth. Only by taking
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A baby is born unto us. It brings the element of a radical change into
the existing relationship of us. Let me consider a simple case of twolovers in order to grasp the point. The coming of a baby is an ambivalent event to them; its cause is very clear, their sexual intercourse.
They are the makers of their baby even if they in fact did not want tohave a child. This means that they can control the childbirth to a certain extent but they can never control 'who' would be born unto us.
Every newborn comes into existence as a unique person who is never"the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live" (HC: p.8).
For a couple of lovers, the 'who' of their child is contingent and unpredictable in spite of the fact that it is no doubt their "love's own product". The baby comes unto them as a stranger in this sense. And thebaby demands them to transform their relationship "into another modeof belonging together", that it, from two lovers into parents who havethe responsibility to take care of the baby. Through their acceptance ofits coming, the newborn is transformed from a strange and namelessbeing into the child whose existence and uniqueness are affirmed bythose who existed in the world. For two lovers to accept a newborn as
their child means to receive the end of their love affair and to affirm
the beginning of a new relationship between three persons. In otherwords, their relationship does not end but still continues through its
radical change that a newcomer brought. Here we realize the real significance of an Arendtian concept of natality for her theory of action:
what she discovers in the event of birth is not just the beginning of
someone new but, more crucially, the beginning of a new relationship.
For Arendt the fact of natality discloses the most basic mode of continuity and change in the realm of human affairs and thus the principleof political action.

into account this particular interpretation can we understand Arendt's emphasis of 'beginning': "Because they are initium, newcomers and beginners
by virtue of birth, men take initiative, are prompted into action" (HC:p.177).
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as an 'On-going Process'Although the child birth is definitely a private event that goes on
within the closed space hidden from the public at large, it shares thebasic mode of continuity and change with the human activity thatArendt calls action-the interactions among the plural men in the public
realm. She compares the happening of a course of action to "second
birth": "With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world,
and this insertion is like a second birth" (sec.24, p.176). Action as wellas birth is the insertion of someone into the world through whichsomething new is brought unto the people. Every action appears in "theweb of human relationships which exists wherever men live together"and thus "[t] he disclosure of 'who' through speech, and the setting ofa new beginning through action, always fall [s] into an already existing web where their immediate consequences can be felt" (HC: p.183-4,
emphases added). Every human community whose continuity depends
basically upon the existing orders and relationships is always exposed
to 'the constant influx of newcomers' who, whether they are strangers
who come into it from without or those who want to transform thegiven circumstances from within, bring the moment of change. Every
beginning, whether the birth of a child or action as 'a second birth',needs to be recognized and responded to by others who belong to thepreexisting web of human relationships.
In sum, Arendt describes the basic structure of human relationships
as a steadily changing process which consists of the coming of strangers and the response to them by the existing people. Hence, solidarity
is tied to a notion of natality. But we should note a crucial distinction
between the childbirth that happens in the private realm and action as"a second birth" that is performed in the public-political realm. Simply
put, newborns lack 'word and deed' that are indispensable to the actors
in politics. By examining this difference, we will figure out Arendt's vision of political solidarity as an on-going process.

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3.
The theoretical distinction of politics and education that Arendt argues in her essay, "The Crisis in Education" (1958), is particularly instructive in examining this difference. The realm of politics consists ofthe people who "act among and with adults and equals", while the realmof childcare and education depends on "the relations between grownups and children"18. In the latter, human relationships are necessarily
unequal and asymmetric. A newborn comes into existence by its birth
but it cannot insert itself 'with word and deed'. It is powerless and evenincapable of taking care of itself. Parents (and/or other adults) haveto look after it, give it its own name like Hannah, and bring it up not
as a just living creature but as a newcomer who will disclose its uniqueexistence in the public relationships. In sum, parents "have not only
summoned their children into life through conception and birth, they
have simultaneously introduced them into a world" (BPF: p.185emphasis added). Education is a process in which adults "gradually introduce" children into the world by protecting, training and teachingthem. This gradual process begins in the family home whose "four wa
lls…constitute a shield against the world and specifically against the
public aspect of the world" (p.186). Then, children are introduced into
the school as "the institution" that adults "interpose between the private domain of home and the world in order to make the transition
from the family to the world possible at all" (p.188f). What Arendt emphasizes is the "responsibility" of adults to take care of children and the"authority" of educators to teach students. A teacher trains his students "as though he were a representative of all adults inhabitants,
pointing out the details and saying to the child: This is our world"(p.194-emphasis added). By 'our world', Arendt is here referring to the18

Arendt, Between Past and Future, Penguin, 1968, p.192-hereafter cited as
BPF.
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as an 'On-going Process'community which its preexisting inhabitants have constructed andcontinued. In other words, educational activities are essentially "conservative" in the sense that the elder members of a community bring up
the younger to be good participates in the traditional knowledge andmoral customs which they have conserved and cultivated. The authority of educators depends on the superiority of the old generations
which is "firmly grounded in the encompassing authority of the past"(ibid).
In the realm of politics, on the other hand, are framed utterly differently since politics consists of reciprocal intercourse among equal actors. In order to illustrate the matter in question, let me consider themost basic and elemental structure of human action that Arendt demonstrates by a set of two terms, archein (agere) and prattein (gerere):
In order to illustrate what is at stake here we may remember that
Greek and Latin, unlike the modern languages, contain two altogether different and yet interrelated words with which to designate
the verb "to act". To the two Greek verbs archein ("to begin", "tolead", finally "to rule") and prattein ("to pass through", "to achieve","to finish") correspond the two Latin verbs agere ("to set into motion", "to lead") and gerere (whose original meaning is "to bear").
Here it seems as though each action were divided into two parts, thebeginning made by a single person and the achievement in which
many join by "bearing" and "finishing" the enterprise, by seeing it
through (HC: sec.26, p.189).
In short, action is a kind of human conduct that consists of archein (tobegin) and prattein (to follow). What Arendt means by the word 'action' is not just 'to begin something new', let alone, as assumed by critics, 'to create something new ex nihilo'. Rather, Arendt takes action to
be course of an event that someone begins and other (s) follow (s).
What Arendt illuminates by 'two altogether different and yet interrelated words', archein and prattein, is "the original interdependence of
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and the dependence of his followers upon him for an occasion to act
themselves" (HC: p.189-emphases added). In other words, the sequenceof action starts not at the moment that someone begins something but
at the moment that the other (s) respond (s) and follow (s)-'with wordand deed' -to something that someone began, just as a event of childbirth becomes the beginning of a unique person when two lovers accept
her/his coming unto them and affirm that their relationship is transformed into new one. My point is to highlight the crucial importance of'prattein' (to follow) without which archein cannot be the beginning(arch
) of a new sequence of action. "Action", Arendt argues, "is neverpossible in isolation" so that every actor needs other actors who follow
what she begins. In this sense, the element of prattein is essential to action as praxis19. Moreover, since every beginning of action as 'a second
birth', unlike the birth of a child, happens among those "who are capable of their own actions", every prattein is another possible archein.
Thus Arendt argues that "reaction…is always a new action that strikes
out on its own and affects others" and thus "action and reaction among
men never move in a closed circle and can never be reliably confined totwo partners" (p.190). The "space of appearance" emerges and continues through the changeable sequence of innumerable (re) actions(archrin--prattein/archein -prattein/archein- …) through which theexisting relationships are always exposed to the possibility of radicaltransformations. It is the realm of dynamic power relations "where
every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is thecause of new processes" (ibid).
While such a view of mutual action is, to a certain extent, consonantwith an 'agonistic' image of democratic politics, my point is not to examine whether an Arendtian kind of politics is 'agonistic' or 'deliberative' but to focus on the most basic condition of mutual action that

19 Markell, Patchen, "The Rule of the People: Arendt, Arch, and Democracy",
American Political Science Review, vol.100, no.1, 2006
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as an 'On-going Process'

Arendt assumes; that is, the spontaneous agreement to "act in concert"
among actors who insert themselves into the course of mutual action.
A brief conversation of two individuals, for example, begins only if I
speak something to you (archein) and then you respond to me(prattein); and it goes on only if we both try to continue our conversation. In other words, our conversation is premised on affirming one another as equal partners and "trusting in action and speech as a mode ofbeing together" (p.208). In short, the beginning and continuity of'archein-prattein' sequence depends on the spontaneous agreement to
act in concert. It necessarily follows in every action, whether our conversation is agonistic or deliberative, whether we are members of a certain community or not. In other words, an event of action can happen
and continue whenever men agree to act in concert regardless of the favored conditions of consensus: "The space of appearance comes into
being wherever men are together in the manner of speech and action,and therefore predates all formal constitution of the public realm andthe various forms of government" (sec. 28, p.199).
Arendt never claims to create a new political space ex nihilo. A conversation between you and me emerges not in the middle of nowhere
but in the concrete place where we operate under the existing moral
customs, social manners, legal institutions, and are surrounded bymany other people. Almost every attempt to act in concert happens in
the midst among the given things and continues by following theseterms and conditions. This, however, does not mean that our practices
simply follow the preexisting codes. Every act of prattein is potentiallyarchein; to follow something that already exists in a unique way implies the possibility to transform it into something new. This is thebasic mode of action, and the basic mode of political solidarity as an ongoing process. Political solidarity is born when a number of people
spontaneously follow a certain act that someone set into motion,
gradually expanding its influence, speed and inherent diversity as more
people follow it. Political solidarity, therefore, is cultivated and sustained through spontaneous participation. This insight coincides with
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Arendt's concept of power (dynamis): power is always "a power potential and not an unchangeable, measurable, and reliable entity like force
or strength….power springs up between men when they act together
and vanishes the moment they disperse" (p.200). Thus political solidarity is a fugitive and contingent process. It is an open-ended process thatinspires newcomers to follow. As Arendt notes in On Revolution, "solidarity is a principle that can inspire and guide action" (OR: p.89).
Before I elaborate further on Arendt's vision of political solidarity asa principle of action, I return to Rorty's conception of political solidarity. From his point of view, an Arendtian kind of action should be performed within the private realms because it is irrelevant and evendangerous to the existing sense of political solidarity which, in his
view, consists of the sense of identity among "we liberals". For Rorty,"our sense of us" is bound up with the belief in the superiority of liberal
way of life and liberal institutions; these things might merely be theconsequence of contingent historical circumstances but are, by great
fortune, much better than all others. So "we liberals" should, Rorty
says, expand 'our sense of us' through the process of 'inclusion amongus' of 'them'. From the perspective of Arendt, such a process is not thesequence of political activities among equal partners but the course of
educational activities in which mature adults teach immature children
and introduce them into their community: "This is our world" (BPF:
p.194), newcomers, you must learn the greatness of our liberal societythat we have constructed and conserved. Rorty assumes the superiorityof 'we twentieth-century liberals' over 'them' in his self-centered nationalist formulation of political solidarity, just as an elementary school
teacher assumes that he has the authority over his pupils in the classroom. This vision is not new but rather common in the history of political thought; many great philosophers have thought of an ideal formof political community in terms of the educational activities since Plato
who claimed to transform the solidarity of free citizens in the polis into
an authoritarian relationship between a wise philosopher-king and thecommons. In spite of his powerful declaration on the lapse of the65−1･2−68 (名城'15)Hannah Arendt's Concept of 'Natality' and the Vision of Political Solidarity
as an 'On-going Process'traditional philosophy which has been captured by the metaphysicalpresuppositions and thus reluctant to affirm the fact that there isnothing "beyond history and institutions", Rorty tamely adheres to the
tradition of political philosophy by endorsing the identification of politics to education.
4.
Arendt provides two historical examples of political solidarity bothof which can be found in Crises of the Republic: the first is "the organized solidarity of the masters" found in the ancient Greek city-state andthe second is the "act of solidarity" characteristic of the student movements in the 1960's America20. Although both are examples of politicalsolidarity, there are nonetheless great differences to be discerned between them. The former refers to the organization of worrier-citizens
who participated in political decisions as equal citizens, on the one
hand, and who dominated the "slaves" as their "masters", on the other.
The master-citizens united themselves against slaves according to thedivision between them which was firmly prescribed by the laws and institutions of city-state. Arendt never advocates such an image of solidarity but simply describes it as a historical example. It is only thelatter case that she voices her approval, describing it as a "definitely
positive" example of solidarity, because it arose out of "a spontaneouspolitical movement" and because the students "acted almost exclusively
from moral motives" and discovered that "acting is fun" (COR: p.203).
It is safe to say that the example of an Arendtian version of politicalsolidarity is not the former image of master-citizens but the latter vision of student activism. It is interesting here that Arendt suggeststhat the students discovered what had been called "public happiness" in
the American Revolution era (ibid).

20

Arendt, Crises of the Republic, Harcourt Brace, 1972, p.149, 202f-hereafter
cited as COR.
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In On Revolution, Arendt ends with a citation from Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus:
Sophocles in Oedipus at Colonus, the play of his old age, wrote thefamous and frightening lines [l.1224ff]:
Mphunai ton hapanta nika logou. to d'epei pahn,bnai keis' hopothen per hkei polu deuteron hs takista.
'Not to be born prevails over all meaning uttered in words; by far thesecond-best for life, once it has appeared, is to go as swiftly as possible whence it came.' There he also let us know, through the mouth of
Theseus, the legendary founder of Athens and hence her spokesman,what it was that enabled ordinary men, young and old, to bear life's
burden: it was the polis, the space of men's free deeds and living
words, which could endow life with splendor-ton bion lampron
poieisthai [l.1143-4] (OR: p.281).
This is a strange and cryptic paragraph because Arendt unexpectedlyrefers to the ancient Greek's tragic view of human world and life in thevery final paragraph of the text in which she examines the principle of
the American Revolution in the late 18th century (a text which, moreover, rarely mentions the ancient Greeks). Taking two sets of lines from
Sophocles' last work which deals with the end of Oedipus' life, she compares a pessimistic view of human mortality with Theseus' words
which, according to Arendt, tells that the polis can "endow life withsplendor". Then, what is the polis?-on the face of it, Arendt appears to
be referring to the Greek polis, which in another text she describes,
with reference to Pericles' Funeral Oration, as founded "to multiply theoccasions to win immortal fame" and it was "a kind of organized remembrance" to keep "the everlasting remembrance of their good andbad deeds" (HC: p.197f). If, as argued by George Kateb, Arendt's
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as an 'On-going Process'account of the polis stands in opposition to the the Silenus' wisdomcited in the last paragraph of On Revolution, her introduction of it
would be "the most shocking and foreign moment in her writings"21. If
the warrior-citizen of Athens is to perform his passionate "agonal
spirit" in the political agora and the battle field in order to overcome
his mortal fate by winning immortal fame beyond good and evil, thenis he nothing but 'being-toward-death' that 'must shatter against' his
mortal fate? Given that Arendt is the preeminent thinker of natality,
it remains for us to examine carefully what she is suggesting with thisstrange citation. Is Arendt "one of the great modern appreciators of
the Periclean ideal"?22
Arendt makes a clear distinction between the Greek city-state andthe polis as the space of appearance. The former is the Athenian citystate in which a small number of citizens competed for the glory andpraise within the walls around the city (HC: 194f). The freedom of action and speech could exist only in the public space enclosed by thewalls, whereas the world outside the walls of city was not the space ofpeaceful interaction but the field of violent strife. The Athenian citizens whose greatness Pericles praised in his famous Funeral Oration
were the brutal worriers who wished to gain their immortal fame bydefeating the other Greeks and barbarians. Arendt distinguishes thepolis from the historical city-state as such: "The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organizationof the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and itstrue space lies between people living together for this purpose, no mat-21

George Kateb, Politics, Conscience, Evil, Rowman & Allanheld, 1984, p.1;
See also, Margaret Canovan, "Hannah Arendt as a Conseravtive Thinker",
Hannah Arendt: Twenty Years Later, edited by Larry May and Jerome
Kohn, p.28f
22 Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship, Princeton U. P., 2001, p.21
23 My arguments do not deny the importance of the Greek city-state in
Arendt's reflection on the genealogy of the Western political experiences.
As she notes, "[t]he Greek polis will continue to exist at the bottom of our
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Articleter where they happen to be" (HC: 198, emphases added)23 . It is clearthat "the polis" that Arendt refers to in the last paragraph of On Revolution is not the city-state but the polis as the space of appearance inthis sense, since the whole drama in Oedipus at Colonus goes on not inside the city of Athens but Colonus, a rural place outside the walls ofAthens. Moreover, it is not the story of interaction among elitecitizens but the story of the encounters between the Athenian people
and powerless exiles ("apopolis", l.207)24 and the creation of a new relationship forged through promises25.
In the opening of the play, Oedipus comes to Colonus accompanied byhis daughter26 . The inhabitants of Colonus fear this strange visitor:"The old man is a wanderer, a wanderer, not a native!" (l.123-4); "He is
terrible [deinos] to see and terrible to hear!" (l.141). When it is revealed that Oedipus is the notorious ex-king of Thebes who was kickedout of that city on charge of patricide and incest, he is expelled yet
again27. The crucial word is 'deinon'28; The people of Colonus hesitate to

24

25
26

27

28

political experience [...] as long as we use the word 'politics'" (Men in Dark
Times, Harcourt Brace, 1972, p.204). The Greek polis is, for Arendt, the oldest example of authentic political experiences. However this does not meanthat Arendt idealizes the Greek city-state. For Arendt, every "example" isnot the mere object to be praised but something that we should examinefrom various perspectives and judge critically.
Most of the English citations of Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone are derived from H. Lloyd-Jones's translation (Sophocles: II, edited and translatedby, The Loeb Classical library, 1994) with a few modifications of my own.
Peter Euben indicates this point, though his interpretation is different frommine (Euben, Platonic Noise, Princeton U. P., 2003, p.44f).
Oedipus: "Child of a blind old man, Antigone, to what regions, or to what
men's city have we come? Who on this day shall receive Oedipus the wanderer [plans] with scanty gift?" (...)/ Antigone: "Unhappy father, Oedipus, the walls that surround the city look to be far off." (Oedipus atColonus: l.1-5, 14-5)
The people of Colonus are afraid that the curse of Oedipus would be harmful
to the security of their land (Oedipus is forced to confess: "Terrible was mybirth [deina physis]", l.207): "leave this seat and hasten away from mycountry, for fear you may fasten some heavier burden on my city!" (l. 233f).
"These poetic words express the intimate relation of being-there [Dasein] to65−1･2−72 (名城'15)Hannah Arendt's Concept of 'Natality' and the Vision of Political Solidarity
as an 'On-going Process'accept the refuge who wants to be accepted because he seems to them anuncanny pariah. In other words, they judge 'who Oedipus is' not by'what he does' but by 'what he was'. Theseus response to Oedipus is,however, different: "Oedipus, I wish to ask you what request of the cityand of me you have come to make, you and your unfortunate companion. Tell me! No matter how terrible [deinn] a fortune you might
speak of, I would not turn away from it… I would never turn aside
from helping to rescue any exile such as you." (l.560-1, 565-6) Oedipus
answers with his requests-that is, through the conversation between
Oedipus and Theseus-Theseus grants Oedipus and his daughters amnesty. This suggests that through words and deeds on the part of both
Theseus and Oedipus, the relationship between the community ofColonus and Oedipus is transformed; no longer perceived as a pariah,
Oedipus is welcomed into the community and regarded as a friend.
Hence we find an example in which strangers found an Arendtian polis
as "the space of appearance in the widest sense of the word, namely, thespace where I appear to others as others appear to me" (HC: p.198). The

being and its disclosure; they do so by naming what is remotest from Being,
namely not-being-there. Here the strangest and most terrible possibility of
being-there is revealed. [...] being-there must, in every act of violence, shatter against Being" (An Introduction of Metaphysics, translated by R.
Manheim, Yale University Press, 1959, p.177). Human being whose essenceis 'being-toward-death' (Sein zum Tode) is so terrible that he must violate
the order of Being. Heidegger draws this from the Greek word 'deinon' in
the first ode of Sophocles' Antigone: "There is much that is strange, but
nothing that surpasses man in strangeness (polla ta deina kouden anthr
pou deinoteron pelei) " (l.332f). The word 'deinon' means 'terrible', 'strange','violent', 'clever' and 'uncanny' (un-heimlich). Human being is the most violent and most uncanny creature of all (to deinotaton) (An Introduction of
Metaphysics: pp.146ff). Arendt criticizes Heidegger's insight of deinon as an
essence of being-there with her insight of a human faculty of action. Although human beings are surely deinon in the sense that they easily use
violence, it does not mean that they are fated to be at war among themselves or to "shatter against Being" (BPF: p.42). They can constitute thespace of appearance, the realm of political freedom, in which they disclose
their unique personalities: "men, though they must die, are not born inorder to die but in order to begin" (HC: p.246).
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Articlespace of appearance emerges among strangers whenever they accept
each other as friends [philoi], regardless of origin or identity. One suspects that for Arendt, the story of Oedipus at Colonus resonates withher writings on the American Revolution because it illuminates thegenerative and transformative potential of political solidarity: a potential that Arendt discovers in the American Revolution, that is to say,the birth of a country that accepted her as a new member when she wasa disempowered exile.
It is a new beginning of political solidarity whose principle Arendt
discovers in the American Revolution, that is, the beginning of a country that accepted her as a new member when she was a powerless
exile29. But we should note that a beginning (arche) of solidarity could
not become an on-going process unless actors follow it by another practice (prattein).
It is with this in mind that we should consider what Arendt endorses
to say with the citation of Theseus' words: what does she mean by saying that the polis "could endow life with splendor" (ton bion lampron
poeisthai)? In Sophocles, the phrase appears at the moment in which
Theseus, responding to Oedipus' gratitude for rescuing his daughters,
Antigone and Ismene, from Creon, the new king of Thebes, asserts, "I
strive to endow life with splendor not through words but through actions (ou gar logoisi ton bion spoudazomen lampron poeisthai mallon

tois drmenois)". In answers to Oedipus' plea to rescue his daughters,
Theseus promises Oedipus that he will have his daughters back"Oedipus, remain here in peace, in the assurance that, if I do not die, I
shall not rest till I have placed your children in your hands!" (l.1139f)-and proceeds to fulfill his promise. Oedipus expresses his gratitude to

29 "[The men of the American Revolution] knew that whatever men might bein their singularity, they could bind themselves into a community which,even though it was composed of 'sinners', need not necessarily reflect this'sinful' side of human nature. [...] The hope for man in his singularity lay
in the fact that not man but men inhabit the earth and form a world between them" (OR: 174f).
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as an 'On-going Process'

Theseus: "[M] ay the gods grant you what I desire, for yourself andfor this country, since I have found in you alone among mankind piety
and fairness and the absence of lying speech!" (l.1124-7). Theseus replies with the words in question: "I strive to endow life with splendor
not through words but through actions. And I can prove it, for I havefailed to keep none of the oaths I swore to you, aged man; I am here
bringing these girls alive" (l.1143-7).
The reason that Arendt connects the polis as the space of appearancewith Theseus's words 'ton bion lampron poeisthai' is clear. The space ofappearance can happen wherever and whenever people create their new
relationship by act of promising, the legitimacy of which is dependent
on the persistent effort to keep one's promise30. It is only as a result of
Theseus' fulfillment-achieved through action-Oedipus places his confidence in Theseus and a friendship is sustained31 . What "endows their

30"Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company,
where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not usedveil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate anddestroy but to establish relations and create new realities" (HC: p.200).
31 The opposite occurs in the case of Creon who uses words to veil his intentions. He is condemned by Oedipus: your words are "sounding goods, but inessence bad" (l.782); "You are clever [deinos] with your tongue" (l.804).
When his attempt of persuasion by falsehood is unsuccessful Creon does nothesitate to use violence. The people of Colonus protest his kidnapping
Antigone ("Let go the girl [Antigone] at once!", l.838), but Creon tells arrogantly: "Do not give orders where you have no force [m krateis]!"(l.839) The Colonus' inhabitants are frightened of this tyrannical man whoboasts his arrogance ("hubris", l.882-3) - it should be noted that in ancient
Greeks hubris is considered to be one of the most dangerous temptation todestroy the bond of their community (HC: p.191; See also, Martha
Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy andphilosophy, Cambridge, 1986). And the people of Colonus say: "What you
say is horrible [deinon]" (l.862). Here again 'deinon' is a crucial word thathits the cleverness and violence of human beings, as Heidegger says that"man is to deinotaton, the most powerful and violent in the midst of theoverpowering" (An Introduction of Metaphysics, p.150). Creon's words
without their faithful performance and his violent acts without words bringnothing but distrust and discord, whereas the relationship between Theseus
and Oedipus goes on by their endeavor to perform their promising.
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Articlelife with splendor" and gives their life delight is their continuous actions to transform and maintain their relationship that they founded.
Even just before his death Oedipus wants to display his friendship to
Theseus: "The scale of my life is turning, and I do not wish to die leaving my promises to you and to the city unfulfilled" (l.1508-9); "Come,
dearest of friends [philtate ksenn], may you have good fortune, yourself and this land and your attendants, and in prosperity remember me
when I am dead for your success for ever!" (l.1552-5). It is impressive
that, even at the moment of death, the eyes of this blind aged man turntoward the future of Athenian king and people who accepted him as a
new friend in spite of his horrible past (deina physis). In a similar way,
for Arendt the political is concerned with the future of the polis as aspace of appearance into which "newcomers who are born into theworld as strangers" will come (HC: 9)32.
Theseus and Oedipus, a noble king and a poor exile, were not friends
but just strangers before their chance encounter outside the wall of thecity-state. Their sense of solidarity depends neither on shared identities nor on existing institutions but on their own words and deeds. The
tale shows the most elemental form of political solidarity as an ongoing process 'to act in concert'; it illustrates the archof solidarity as"a principle that can inspire and guide action" (OR: p.89).

32

As for the men of American Revolution, Arendt writes: "It was matter ofcourse [...] that they had to found and build a new political space within
which the 'passion for public freedom' or the 'pursuit of public happiness'would receive free play for generations to come, so that their own 'revolutionary' spirit could survive the actual end of the revolution" (OR: p.126,
emphases added).
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