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8 - Athens and Rome

from PART IV - ARENDT AND THE ANCIENTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Dana Villa
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Summary

It is not unusual among the readers of Hannah Arendt to ascribe to her an exclusively performative conception of action and consequently to suspect a certain Graecomania in her meditations on the constitutive features of the political realm. Those readers would contend that, by reason of her distinction between genuine action and every mode of production of works or tangible results, Arendt limited the notion of action to the spontaneity of a pure performance which essentially consists in the glory of its ephemeral appearance. Consequently her political thought, so they argue, would have been excessively focused on the model of the Greek city. In short it would have been affected by a Graecomania of which those readers find evidence in her comments on the funeral oration attributed to Pericles by Thucydides. Indeed, referring to that oration in The Human Condition, Arendt claims that the Athenians ascribed a “twofold function” to the institution of their polis: (1) “to multiply the occasions to win 'immortal fame,' that is, to multiply the chances for everybody to distinguish himself, to show in deed and word who he was in his unique distinctness” (p. 197), and (2) “to offer a remedy for the futility of action and speech,” thanks to “the organization of the polis, physically secured by the wall around the City and physiognomically guaranteed by its laws,” an organization which was a kind of “organized remembrance” (pp. 197-198).

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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  • Athens and Rome
  • Edited by Dana Villa, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521641985.009
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  • Athens and Rome
  • Edited by Dana Villa, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521641985.009
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Athens and Rome
  • Edited by Dana Villa, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521641985.009
Available formats
×