Appearances and Legitimacy: The Continued Relevance of Hannah Arendt’s ‘On Violence’ in the 21st Century

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by Matthew Edwards

25 June 2021

ABSTRACT: While Hannah Arendt’s ‘On Violence’ is heavily influenced by the events of its time – amongst others, the Cold War, the 1968 student uprisings and the Vietnam War – key elements of the conceptual framework forming her conclusions as to the nature of violence and its relationship with power remain valid. Power and violence, as defined by Arendt in ‘On Violence’, continue to have an adversely relative relationship, albeit that the relationship between them does not directly correlate. The nature or form of a political entity can clearly affect the timing of the impact of power and violence upon each other. Although some recent trends in warfare and communication methods question aspects of ‘On Violence’, in particular regarding questions of influences on behaviour, Arendt’s conclusions regarding bureaucracy and responsibility for actions need only minor adjustments to be applicable to the political and economic turbulence of recent years, and to some of the underlying popular frustrations regarding the perceived lack of political accountability in many countries.

Introduction

Published in 1969, Hannah Arendt’s ‘On Violence’ remains one of her best-known works. While of its time, it remains useful for prompting a reflection on and examination of the nature of violence itself and the inherently linked relationships between ‘power’, ‘strength’, ‘authority’, ‘force’ and ‘violence’. Arendt’s study contributed to – and continues to contribute to – the discussion of the use of violence as a tool – notably as a political tool. In the following piece, these ideas are examined as they are presented in ‘On Violence’: this is not meant to be an examination of the total corpus of Arendt’s thought on the subject, which was subject to change and evolution, nor a review of all the literature surrounding Arendt or the use of violence as a tool.

Reflecting on the use of these five terms – power, strength, authority, force, violence – Arendt made an effort to define them in order to enable exactitude of language in the discussion of their relationship and impact. Thus, for Arendt, “power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together”, strength “is the property inherent in an object or person and belongs to its character”, force “should be reserved to indicate the energy released by physical or social movements”, authority is “elusive…can be vested in persons…or offices” with its hallmark being “unquestioning recognition by those who are asked to obey; neither coercion nor persuasion is needed.” Finally, violence is viewed as a tool and as an act of destruction; “the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength, until in the last stage of their development, they can substitute for it.” (Arendt, 1969, 44-46)

Arendt bases her discussion and conclusions on the nature of violence within the framework of these definitions. This specificity must be borne in mind when discussing ‘On Violence’ in particular, given that – as she openly states – other writing on the subject frequently uses the various terms as synonyms or metaphors for each other. The use of language reflects Arendt’s own conclusions on the nature of political discourse, and her critique of commentary and reflection upon it (an interesting discussion of these elements can be found in Peeters, R. (2008)). Does this specificity, however, place limits upon the usefulness of Arendt’s definitions and conclusions when examining our contemporary political or international environment? Or do they stand firm and relevant in the changing face of international politics and political interaction?

Of the Time

It is an obvious but needed point to say that Arendt’s discussion of power and violence is rooted within the political reality of when she was writing, the late 1960s. Her use of examples within On Violence reflects this – the 1968 student uprisings, the tense Superpower relations pre-détente, the Vietnam War, and ongoing de-colonialization being examples cited amongst others. The nature of the relations between the Superpowers and the potential for escalation into nuclear exchange in the event of conflict between the USA and Soviet Union, plays a clear part of her thinking: “The technical development of the implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict… those engaged in the perfection of the means of destruction have finally reached a level of technical development where their aim, namely, warfare, is on the point of disappearing altogether by virtue of the means at its disposal…” (1969, 3-5)

Arendt’s view on conflict between the Superpowers seems to be somewhat restricted and focused on the potential for maximum escalation. Direct, overt confrontation between them is covered in her conclusions on the potential nature of conflict between them; conflict, such as was seen prior to 1945, with the use of violence at a state-on-state level to further a political aim was (at directly between the Superpowers) no longer tenable as a policy tool: as an example, one could cite using state-driven violence (i.e. war) to take and hold territory, similar to wars in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, was not possible directly between the superpowers.

With the benefit of hindsight and the release of Cold War-era political material, the wariness of the Superpowers in avoiding levels or certain types of behaviour that could prompt the other to respond with direct confrontation (and thus approach the nuclear threshold), when engaging in proxy wars, can be seen. Calibration did take place, with no automatic escalation: both NATO and the Warsaw Pact planned for operations below the nuclear threshold. However, Arendt’s statement that the “technical development of the implements of violence [i.e. nuclear weapons] has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict” does not reflect the reality of the situation as it was. It is not the place here to discuss under what circumstances and in what scenario NATO or the Warsaw Pact would have resorted to nuclear weapons but it can be argued that, within a conflict, tactical nuclear exchanges between the opposing armed forces without an escalation beyond this were a possibility.  

Arendt goes further, citing the words of General Andre Beaufre: “Only ‘in those parts of the world not covered by nuclear deterrence’ is war still possible and even this ‘conventional warfare,’ despite its horrors, is actually already limited by the ever-present threat of escalation into nuclear war.” (1969, 5, footnote 3.)  In retrospect, Arendt does cover, through this citation, the use of proxies and indirect confrontation. But unfortunately, this is not explored in depth. The numerous proxy wars that took place during the Cold War demonstrated that the use of warfare or ‘violence’ as a tool of international politics between the Superpowers was far from disappearing. Whether looking at wars in which the USA or Soviet Union were directly involved (such as Vietnam in the 1960s-1970s for the USA, or Afghanistan in the 1980s for the Soviet Union), or where proxy actors were used by both sides (Angola and Nicaragua in the 1980s, or Congo in the 1960s to name but a few), violence as a tool of political power was clearly in the Superpowers toolset – and indeed in the toolset of their various allies. Although Arendt states of violence that “no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene” (1969, 5), her failure to explore here fully that violence could still be used in horrifically destructive and bloody wars between the Superpowers that were (barely) at arms-length is noteworthy, especially as the phenomenon of proxy wars is clearly not a new, post-1945 development.

Arendt makes a further point, however, that is worth reflecting upon. She states that “the amount of violence at the disposal of any given country may soon not be a reliable indication of the country’s strength or a reliable guarantee against destruction by a substantially smaller of weaker power”, having referred to the potential creation of biological weapons by small groups, the idea of robot soldiers, and the view that in conventional wars poor countries are much less vulnerable than the great powers not least as technical superiority can prove to be a liability in guerrilla wars (1969, 10). Certainly, some of these continue to reflect ongoing worries in our contemporary time – the acquisition of nuclear (‘dirty bomb’), biological or chemical weapons capability by Al Qaida or the so-called Islamic State and its affiliates being one of the most high-profile examples of recent years. And the challenges faced by military forces with technical superiority in combating technically inferior opponents in insurgency-type warfare is clear.

Power and Violence

Questions of power remain pertinent in our contemporary world. Who has power? What types of power are there? How can it be employed? All are questions that regularly appear, with efforts to break power down through various analytical concepts: soft power, hard power, economic power, military power and so on (Ettmayer, 2019). Arendt takes a step back from this.

Arendt’s definition that ‘power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert’ is linked to her following statement on political power: “When we say of somebody that he is ‘in power’ we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with…disappears, ‘his power’ also vanishes” (1969, 44). Power is drawn from the empowerment by and support of others: it is separate from a capability (here, to enact violence) and may be affected by decisions made. Arendt’s distinction between violence and power is interesting as it makes it clear that power is independent from the ability to enact violence. She explores the nature of power separately in other works, notably her essay ‘What is Freedom?’, where she makes clear her belief that power cannot be exercised through “tools” and is not in itself an instrument to an end.

In On Violence, Arendt (briefly) considers the necessary distinction and connection between having a capability and being willing to use that capability in a particular set of circumstances. For the underlying meaning of Arendt’s distinction regarding power and violence – as per her definition, violence being a tool or an implement of power – brings out an important point. Nominal power is one thing but the will to use that power through an instrument, in this case an implement of violence, is a very different issue. She comments on the issue of will at the end of On Violence: “If power has anything to do with the we-will-and-we-can, as distinguished from the mere we-can, then we have to admit that our power has become impotent…Have the I-will and the I-can parted company?” (1969, 86) In a way, it is surprising that she asked such a question. The importance of will power and of morale – separate things – has been well known to militaries and leaders throughout the world since ancient times – and, especially in more recent times, to politicians who have sent the military to war. The consequences of a break down in popular support for engagement in a war is, infamously, well known regarding the USA and its involvement in Vietnam, but this is hardly the first or last time that a decline in domestic support undermined the political willingness to prosecute a war – or where a country has had the capability to do something with tools of violence but has not chosen to. Although implicit in her comments reflecting on contrasting vulnerabilities between poor and technically advanced countries, she does not, however, make explicit the connection that the willingness to endure is a key part of power – especially when it comes to the interaction with violence.

Arendt’s questioning of whether power contains an element of will rather than just capability remains a problem with her construct of the meaning of power. With the changing nature of international politics since the end of the Cold War especially, this question of ‘will’ becomes ever more important. Most demonstrably within the West since the intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the question of will and the willingness for states to use tools of violence is a clear one – one obviously with different answers depending on the country examined at that particular time. This is illustrated for example by the different responses of France, the UK and Germany (amongst others) to involvement in the 2011 intervention in Libya and subsequently in Syria against the so-called Islamic State.

Power is not simply a question of capability or capacity. An actor must have the will to use tools of their power – or at the very least make others believe they will use the tools – otherwise the actor has no effective power. In international politics and exchange, the tools available cover the full range available to a state or international body acting together – such as economic tools (for example embargos or sanctions), cultural and soft-power tools, and military and hard power tools.

Within this equation the changing level of political will, which can often change much faster than capability, has a much swifter impact on power than Arendt would appear to accept.

Power is invested in a group (whether a collection of individuals at one end of the scale or states at the other) and in the ability of that group to act in concert; without a collective goal, there is no chance of a group acting together. The group would be power-less, even if some of the individual elements within it might otherwise have the capability to do so.

Yet power has to involve more than people acting in unity; it has to be an act in unity against a resistant element or something that is in the way of the goal being achieved. The item that power operates against need not be much, but power has to overcome something in order for it to exist. In essence, this is the imposition of one’s will or desires upon an ‘other’ (even if that ‘other’ is a situation that resists change – poverty, to take a non-military example – given that ultimately the changes that are made are done so by changing the behaviours, actions, and/or situational aspects of individuals).

On Legitimacy

The relationship between violence and power is not a simple one. Arendt makes a key point regarding the use of violence explicit: namely, that “to substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price paid is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power” (1969, 53). This is potentially even more the case in the contemporary world than it was when Arendt was writing, for the question of the legitimacy of the action and the impact of this on the legitimacy of the actor is one that has been reinforced in the post-Cold War world.

Arendt refers to legitimacy as being essential for power, with such legitimacy being derived “from the initial getting together rather than from any action that may follow” (1969, 52). This would indicate that for Arendt the legitimacy of an action is based on the initial raison d’être of the group (which is not to say that the raison d’être can’t change over time, although this would amount to a change in the group itself, insofar as its essence has now changed). Distinctly, the justification for an action “relates to an end that lies in the future” (1969, 52).

This distinction causes a potential quandary for the use of Arendt’s terminology under contemporary circumstances. She says that “Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate” (1969, 52). It is uncertain if this is a normative or a positive statement by Arendt and there appears to be a problematic element. Is she saying that violence can never be justified by an appeal to the past i.e. to what has previously happened, given that the justification relates to a future end? Or that the use of violence by a group cannot be legitimate – even if the raison d’etre of that group is immediate self-defence (which she seems implicitly to accept)?

Moving beyond this, into the contemporary use of violence at an international level – notably in regards to the issue of Responsibility to Protect – does Arendt’s use of legitimacy and justification remain appropriate?

The use of violence clearly remains within the toolset of a state within the post-Cold War world. Yet its use has been constrained, notably for and by Western states, by an increasing requirement that any use of violence should be seen to be legitimate and legal, in cause and in conduct. Under the contemporary international system, legitimacy for an action may be conveyed by states being authorised to use the tools of violence by (for example) the United Nations, through a Security Council Resolution; for many countries, this is a prerequisite for military intervention in another country. The group of states that will then act gains its legitimacy through the coming together for the explicit purpose of – ultimately – using violence in support of an agreed objective. Violence is giving legitimacy, as well as being justified (using Arendt’s definitions).

However, legitimacy can also be used to refer to an aspect contained within what Arendt would refer to as power; by drawing it out, we can explore further Arendt’s conclusion regarding the price paid by the victor as well as the vanquished. In essence, a country using violence often damages itself through the use of that violence, with the damage being in one or more of a number of forms (including but not limited to human, financial, reputational, and international and domestic political costs). Using violence, such as military forces, almost always generates some criticism of the state using them, albeit that the amount of this clearly varies dependent upon the circumstances and the particular country. The impact that this has demonstrates Arendt’s conclusions; violence can achieve an end, but at a cost for the victor. One needs only to look at the use of violence in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that, in a limited sense, achieved its end of removing the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein from power, but did so at what turned out to be a high cost – not least for the Iraqi people, but also for the leading countries in the Coalition, notably the US and the UK, in terms of damage to what may be termed their reputational standing and their moral authority, in addition to the sheer financial and human cost of the war.

Events in Iraq subsequent to the 2003 invasion arguably support Arendt’s contention that “Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power” (1969, 53), if by the use of power it is accepted that it can also mean legitimacy. Iraq is hardly the only place where a government put together with the support of an invading power has suffered problems of legitimacy with their domestic population.

The question of timeframes deserves comment. Arendt references the crushing by the Soviet Union of the 1968 Prague Spring. She contends that “Rule by sheer violence comes into play where power is being lost” (1969, 53). Where a government or authority has no other option but to use violence to sustain it, it will (ultimately) approach the end of the proverbial road. But clearly the time between imposition of violence and the point at which the loss of power becomes too great for the position of the government to be maintained may well be one that is measured in decades.

Beyond this, what an individual country (or a country’s leadership) views as a legitimate action may, of course, be viewed as illegitimate by other states, non-state actors or individuals, and it is this and the increasing means to demonstrate this view regarding perceived illegitimacy that has grown markedly in recent years with the increasing growth of non-traditional forms of media and routes for the dissemination of information. With the emergence firstly of the 24-hour news cycle and then with the impact of the internet, the ability of an individual or a group to put across a point of view has increased considerably over what was possible when Arendt was writing. It is now possible to have a point of view transmitted to more people in a shorter space of time than before. When it comes to the use of violence by a state, this is critically important.

The use of violence by a state has taken on an increased level of risk since Arendt wrote. We continue to live in the era of the ‘Strategic Corporal’, to use Gen. Charles C. Krulak’s term. “Modern crisis responses are exceedingly complex endeavours. In Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia the unique challenges of military operations other-than-war were combined with the disparate challenges of mid-intensity conflict… The inescapable lesson of Somalia and of other recent operations, whether humanitarian assistance, peace-keeping, or traditional warfighting, is that their outcome may hinge on decisions made by small unit leaders, and by actions taken at the lowest level.” (1999) This concept illuminated the point that junior levels of the military needed to be able to view their actions in a strategic context, take independent actions and make major decisions. Yet the concept can be reversed, with particular importance for Arendt’s conclusion.

The actions of an individual member of military personnel have an impact on the reputation and standing of the military of which he or she is a part. This has always been the case. What has become more evident is how quickly such actions may escalate into reputation damage to that country and to the legitimacy of the action that that country is undertaking. The prevalence of social media and the ability of stories, photos and films to be disseminated even as the events are occurring or shortly thereafter is a new phenomenon as far as the timeframe and breadth of dissemination are concerned. The actions of an individual have increasingly a high-profile and an impact upon the state in whose name they are operating. Thus, the risk for states employing violence as a tool is now higher.

Arendt’s point that there is a cost to the actor involved when using violence to achieve an end need not just apply to states. To give an example, albeit in an extremely simplified form, the intervention in Syria by Lebanese Hizballah to support the Assad regime has been credited with bolstering the regime at a critical point, ensuring the survival of a key partner of Hizballah. Violence – as a tool – has achieved the intended aim, at that point. Yet one could argue that Hizballah’s overall power suffered – for a time – as a result of this intervention: it took significant losses of men and material; its standing in Lebanon more-widely was damaged, as was its legitimacy on the so-called ‘Arab Street’; and its actions contributed to an increase in tension within Lebanon itself and likely contributed to the factors leading to the targeting of Lebanon’s Shia population by Sunni extremists. Yet as time has gone on, elements of this cost have either diminished or been overtaken by other developments. The calculus therefore is not a simple one-moment-fixed-result one. The cost with regard to an action taken can change depending on the timeframe and point in time from which it is considered.

Clearly states and non-state actors have to make a calculation when employing violence as to the cost that the use of violence will have upon them and upon their power – recognising in the modern world that power is increasingly multifaceted, covering both hard and soft domains, includes issues of reputation and image, as well as numbers of military forces and sizes of economies.  Arendt comments that there is “an ominous similarity to one of political science’s oldest insights, namely that power cannot be measured in terms of wealth.” (1969, 10-11) In the contemporary world, this is just as true but the challenges when using violence, with the impact that the conduct of such violence or the opposition to it can have, loom even larger than when Arendt was writing.

Bureaucracy and Accountability

One of Arendt’s most prescient points covers the relationship with and between political parties and their memberships in Western representative democracies. On Violence states that Western representative democracy is “about to lose even its merely representative function to the huge party machines that ‘represent’ not the party membership but its functionaries”. (1969, 23) In general, the trend that Arendt commented on has continued apace. Taking the UK as one example, party membership has continued declining from its peak in the 1950s with, as of 2015, just 1.0% of the electorate as a member of one of the three main national parties. (Keen, 2015, 4) Further research shows that identification with a political party has also declined, across all age ranges and is especially prevalent among the young. (2015, 16) The trend for declining political party membership is present across almost all of 27 European democracies looked at in a 2012 study. (van Biezen et al., 2012; van Biezen, 2013) The question of ‘who does the party represent’, its representatives or its members, continues to be an active one, as does the reverse question of ‘who represents me and what I believe?’

Of related importance though, and one that On Violence reflects on, is the interface between bureaucracy and accountability, and how some of the concerns that Arendt identified have continued and morphed in form in our contemporary political environments. Discussing the various terms used since Ancient Greece to define forms of government, Arendt states that “today we ought to add the latest and perhaps most formidable form of such domination: bureaucracy or the rule of an intricate system of bureaus in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many can be held responsible, and which could be properly called rule by Nobody”. (1969, 38) She continues: “rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs, making it impossible to localize responsibility and to identify the enemy, that is among the most potent causes of the current worldwide rebellious unrest, its chaotic nature, and its dangerous tendency to get out of control and to run amuck”. (1969, 38-39)

These two quotes identify one of the major ongoing undercurrents and tensions within Western democratic political systems in particular – who is responsible for decisions that are made and, separately, who will take responsibility for them? When it comes to democratic institutions, they may weaken as people no longer see themselves reflected in them or where there is a perceived lack of accountability, as ultimately institutions are only as powerful as they are able to command the respect and obedience of the people.

Within Europe, this is one aspect of several that has helped contribute to rising antipathy with those political parties, especially since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008 and the Eurozone debt crisis in 2009, on whose watch the crisis developed. The popular image of the faceless bureaucracy has also contributed to some of the antipathy of recent years with regard to the European Commission and the ‘democratic deficit’ facing the European Union.

There may need to be a slight refinement of Arendt’s argument, however, regarding responsibility within a bureaucracy, and that is the difference between responsibility being ‘localized’ and the responsibility being seen to be ‘localized’. In many democratic systems it is the political representatives who are held responsible for the failure (or even success) of the policies enacted by the civil or public service bureaucracies. It is rare for bureaucratic functionaries to be directly held publicly accountable for mistakes that are made, with this happening normally only in the most grievous of situations that may include abuse, deaths, malfeasance and/or corruption, with resultant media attention. Comparatively minor mistakes, as it were, are held to be the responsibility of the government minister or the government department, with no individual responsibility seemingly attributed. This seems to reinforce Arendt’s later comment that “where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits”. (1969, 65) However, there does need to be the separation of being held responsible and being publicly held responsible. While a government body as a collective or its political face in the form of a minister, may take the public blame, within the department itself responsibility may well be attributed and the individuals responsible held accountable – but because it is done behind closed-doors, as it were, there is a problem with accountability having been seen to have been enacted. To argue that the system always protects its own would be false, although clearly achieving the right balance with regard to accountability and responsibility is one that continues to be difficult to achieve.

On Making Policy and Social Scientists

Arendt reserves some of her harshest judgements for scientists, social scientists, and the policy makers who rely upon their judgements: “there are, indeed, few things that are more frightening than the steadily increasing prestige of scientifically minded brain trusters in the councils of government during the last decades. The trouble is not that they are cold-blooded enough to ‘think the unthinkable’, but that they do not think. Instead of indulging in such an old-fashioned, uncomputerizable activity, they reckon with the consequences of certain hypothetically assumed constellations without, however, being able to test their hypotheses against actual occurrences.” (1969, 6)

With On Violence being written in the context of the Cold War and the Vietnam War, this condemnation of policy makers for trusting in predictions of and then repeating apparently known outcomes, references many of the underlying methods of policy making that were in vogue at the time, in particular with regard to elements of the defence community in the United States. The desire for measurable achievements and metrics from the Johnson Administration and from the McNamara-era Pentagon infamously contributed to the focus on ‘body count’, with proof of casualties inflicted being taken (or, at the least, presented) as proof of progress.

Arendt likely understood the desire for decision makers to be certain as to the outcome when making policy decisions; the desire for certainty of outcome is a largely shared, human one. Uncertainty is unnerving; that those ‘in charge’ are uncertain is potentially even more so to the public. Her criticism was that this desire to be certain was simply unrealistic and could not be achieved; policy or decisions that were made with the expectation of a guaranteed outcome was delusional, and the presentation of policy as guaranteeing an outcome was misleading at best, deliberately deceiving on other occasions. She was as harsh with those who promised policy makers a guaranteed outcome: “The logical flaw in these hypothetical constructions of future events is always the same: what first appears as a hypothesis – with or without its implied alternatives, according to the level of sophistication – turns immediately, usually after a few paragraphs, into a ‘fact’, which then gives birth to a whole string of similar non-facts, with the result that the purely speculative character of the whole enterprise is forgotten.”

This criticism remains just as valid today as in the 1960s. Decision makers – notably in politics or commerce – dislike uncertainty. And yet it is the most enduring element within any decision making context: one cannot ‘know’ what the outcome of decisions that involve multiple variables and/or complex situations will be. But there are few in leadership positions who are openly willing to admit this or that the desired outcome has only a such-and-such chance of actually happening. This complexity and uncertainty of outcome from decision making is made worse in our current time: from dozens of background studies comes one policy paper of several hundred pages, with a 10-page executive summary, shortened to a two-page statement and a two sentence sound-bite to a 140 character-Twitter post.

Issues of uncertainty and seeming randomness have further relevance, notably for those who are prone to believing in or accepting any of the various conspiracy theories that supposedly account for economic, political and / or social developments. Uncertainty, unplanned outcomes and even randomness can be much harder to accept than a pseudo-theory that provides an ordered construct or framework to events.

It is in this that Arendt remains very important. She places humanity at the centre of the decision process, at the centre of international affairs. Humankind makes and takes the decisions that affect others; those decisions have (to varying degrees) humans within them, contemplating them, and enacting them. The friction of humanity conflicts with theories of political or economic systems, or with faith in science. To put it in the context of the current COVID-19 crisis: one can make all the vaccines one wants but if various people then decide they don’t want them…

Decision making in all fields is one that inherently involves a best-choice (or sometimes least-worst choice) on a path of (in-)action regarding an expected range of future outcomes. Increasing the underlying base of knowledge and analysis on which to base the options and choices to provide the greatest probability of achieving that outcome is a broadly standard part of governmental policy making. Arendt’s criticism continues to apply. Forward predicting involves making judgements as to the actions and interactions of countless individuals and events: “Events, by definition, are occurrences that interrupt routine processes and routine procedures; only in a world in which nothing of importance ever happens could the futurologists’ dream come true.” (1969, 7) One is reminded of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s alleged reply to a journalist when asked what is most likely to blow governments off course: “Events, my dear boy, events.”

The continuation of the use of specific forward‑looking predictions presented with certainty or of metrics to support policy decisions continues in almost all fields of public administration, most visibly in support (or opposition) to a particular course of action. Within the economic field, for example, predictions of future levels of growth are often publicly presented as a seeming certainty, without the accompanying probability range. Metrics and quantitative data often continue to be that most easily disseminated by authorities – numbers of patients treated, number of miles of road repaired, number of people trained and so on. Yet many of these are incomplete as data sets in their own right, let alone as measures of achievement or of progress: they are often measures of output, not of outcome, and yet it is the outcome that is often the more important. (It should be said, of course, that the reliability (or otherwise) of statistics is often subject to mockery, especially if the source is a government or official body. The quote attributed to Sir Josiah Stamp (1880-1941) remains, in essence, all too true: “The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget, however, that every one of these figures was put down by a village watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well please.”)

In much of our current political climate, space for uncertainty and the acceptance that decisions inevitably have to be made with at least some level of uncertainty with regard to the outcome, seems to have been reducing for some time. There appears less of a willingness to allow for visible uncertainty or to publicly admit to such, even accepting for the realities of political debate and verbosity. Arendt saw the danger in this. Accepting theories with allegedly known outcomes has “a hypnotic effect: they put to sleep our common sense, which is nothing else but our mental organ for perceiving, understanding, and dealing with reality and factuality”. (1969, 8)

Conclusion

It is perhaps this last point that proves the underlying relevance of Arendt’s On Violence in our contemporary world. Much of what Arendt addresses is the inevitable uncertainty of outcome of human activity in the more extreme of circumstances – using violence, making war. Her call is for policy makers and those who make decisions not to resort to the intellectual comfort-blanket of future certainty. Power and its tool, violence, remain within the national and international political arena. Legitimacy of action and, ultimately, of the government that uses such a tool remain inherently linked. Yet trusting in apparently guaranteed outcomes when using violence and not fully planning for the full range of possible outcomes is a route that governments take at their – and, more often, other’s – peril, shown recently not least in Iraq and Libya. To accept and to espouse certainty of outcome can be an abdication of responsibility, one that – when things go wrong, as all too often they do – leads to a reduction in power and legitimacy, increasing the problems in addressing the major challenges of our time.

The more unsettling relevance of Arendt’s On Violence is linked to two warnings that she conveys. Firstly, that we use violence at our own peril: in the end, the price paid for using it is high – potentially higher than the gains accomplished by its use; and secondly, that violence begets violence, escalating and leading to the development of political or pseudo-political thought to justify it. Her words are just as relevant today when considering the conflicts of our time, and they stand as a warning to those who would resort to violence to achieve their goals.

 
Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah

  • 1969. On Violence. San Diego/New York/London: Harcourt Brace & Company
  • 1961. Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought. New York. The Viking Press.

Ettmayer, Wendelin

  • 2019. Wer hat die Macht in dieser Welt? International, Vol. V/2019, 13-16.

Keen, Richard

Krulak, Gen. Charles C.

  • 1999. The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War. Marines Magazine, January 1999.

Peeters, Rumi

  • 2008. Against Violence, but not at any price: Hannah Arendt’s concept of power. Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network 15, no.2 (2008): 169-192

Simpson, Ian; Philips, Miranda

Van Biezen, Ingrid; Mair, Peter; Poguntke, Thomas

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Van Biezen, Ingrid

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