On Revolution by Hannah Arendt

On Revolution Reviews

• 
  E. G.

  Introduction
  
  --On Revolution
  
  Notes
  Bibliography
  Index
• 
  Sajjad thaier

  
  

  
  "رأفة بالإنسانية وحباُ لها, كونوا لا إنسانيين."
  

  
  هي جملة قالها أحد الأشخاص في المؤتمر الوطني أثناء الثورة الفرنسية ربما تلخص ببساطة التناقض الذي تضع الثورات نفسها به.
  
  أن هذا الكتاب صعب وكثيف جداً وسأكذب أن قلت أني قد فهمته بالكامل. لكن مع التطورات التي تحدث في الوطن العربي وخصوصاُ في السودان حالياً أصبحت قراءة هذا الكتاب أشبه بواجب أخلاقي.
  
  تعد حنة أرندت واحدة من أهم الفلاسفة السياسيين في القرن العشرين. ولدت أرندت في ألمانيا ودرست هناك على يد مارتن هيدغر وكارل ياسبرس. هربت حنة من ألمانيا إلى فرنسا أثناء صعود النازية. وأثناء بقائها هناك دخل الجيش النازي إلى فرنسا وهنا أصبحت في يد النازيين بشكل رسمي.
  لكنها استطاعت الهرب إلى الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية حيث قامت بالتدريس ودراسة الأنظمة الشمولية وبالخصوص النازية والستالينية ونتجت دراستها وبحثها في شكل عملها الخالد "أسس التوتاليتارية" الذي لم يترجم إلى العربية بشكل كامل إلى الآن مع الأسف. ألفت أرندت عدد من الكتب السياسية الأخرى التي سببت بها بعض المشاكل في محيطها الجامعي والاجتماعي ووصل بها الأمر إلى اتهامها بمعاداة السامية.
  
  في كتابها هذا والذي يتعلق بالثورة تتناول أرندت ثورتين هما الثورة الأمريكية في 1775 والثورة الفرنسية 1789 بالتحليل, والبحث, وكشف الأسباب التي دفعت إلى نشوء الثورات, وما الذي يجعلها تستمر, ومالذي يحركها, وبهذا قامت بتأسيس منهج مقارن لكشف العوامل الأساسية التي تدخل في طبيعة الثورة ذاتها ويعطيها طبيعتها الثورية وكذلك العوامل الثانوية التي تميز الثورات أحدها ع�� الآخر وتسمح لأحدها بالنجاح-أن كان يوجد شيء كهذا- وتدفع بعضها للفشل. وكذلك ما الأسباب التي جعل الثورة الفرنسية ثورة خالدة أما الثورة الأمريكية مجرد ثورة أخرى. وتناولت بتحليل مختصر الثورة الروسية وأوجه شبهها بالثورة الفرنسية والتي وصفت ثوارها بأنهم مغفلي التاريخ لأنهم حاولوا أعادة القيام بالثورة الفرنسية رغم أن الأوضاع تختلف لكنهم حاولوا لي الحقائق وفعل أي شيء كي يكونوا جزء من الثورة.
  
  ترى أرندت –أن لم تخني ذاكرتي أو ذكائي- أن أحد أسباب نجاح الثورة الأمريكية وفشل شقيقتها الفرنسية هي:
  
  أن الثورة الفرنسية قد تمت ضد النظام الملكي واللوردات والكنيسة وقامت بتفكيك جميع الروابط والعلاقات السياسية وعادوا بالإنسان إلى "الحالة الطبيعية" التي تكلم عنها روسو الحالة التي يكون الفرد لوحده ومن دون تنظيم أو توجيه من طرف أعلى. فعندما وقعت الثورة وسقطت كل الخيوط التي كانت تربط الشعب بعضه ببعض بحثوا عن غطاء أو شيء جديد لكي يجمع هذه الجموع نحو هدف واحد وهذا الغطاء الذي يغذي الكل كان هو "الرأي العام". الرأي العام هي القوة التي تحرك الجموع ولكنها قوة غريزية وغير منطقية وتؤدي إلى العنف وال تنازع بين الجماعات فيما بينها لكي تفرض جماعة ما رأيها وهذا ما حصل في عهد الإرهاب على يد روبسبيار حيث أستخدم حجة الرأي العام وأهداف الثورة النبيلة للقضاء على كل الجماعات التي تشكل تهديد لحزبه, وينتهي هذا التنازع حول الرأي العام بشكل طبيعي عندما يصل حاكم مستبد لكي تصبح كلمته هي الرأي العام وأفعاله هي الدولة وهذه هي شخصية نابليون الذي أستطاع احتواء فرنسا بالكامل.
  
  أما الثورة الأمريكية على الجانب الأخرى لم تتم ضد حكومتها نفسها بل تمت ضد حكومة أخرى وهي الحكومة البريطانية. وقد كان الشعب الأمريكي قد نظم نفسه بسنوات قبل حدوث الثورة و كان يملك منظومته السياسية المتكاملة وأستطاع عند الثورة الحفاظ على هذه المنظومة وتعزيزها. لذلك تجنبت الثورة الأمريكية الفوضى والعنف الغير ضروري بسبب حكمة شيوخها. فعندما قاموا بطرد الحكومة البريطانية لم يضطروا لمعانة مشكلة تحديد الرأي العام أو بناء منظومة سياسية جديدة كما في فرنسا فقد كانوا يملكون كل شيء مسبقاً. وهذا التنظيم بين الولايات وبين المواطنين أنفسهم لم يطرأ عليه أي تغيير عند تحول السلطة من الحكومة البريطانية إلى الحكومة الأمريكية.
  
  
  هناك عدد كبير من الأسباب الأخرى المتداخلة والمتشابكة التي ساعدت في قيام الثورة والحفاظ عليها حية- فالثورة ليست مجرد لحظة مؤقتة بل هي حدث دائم الاستمرارية يجب أدامته ومنعه من السقوط على رؤوسنا- ولا أستطيع حتى تلخيصها في هذه المراجعة.ولكن يبقى هذا الكتاب مهم جداً لأي شخص يسعى لفهم السبب الذي يقع خلف الربيع العربي ولماذا فشلت جميع الثورات العربية ما عدا ثورة السودان التي نتمنى أن تصل إلى حل مدني يرضي الشعب. –لا أعرف حقاً ماذا حدث في تونس هل نجحت الثورة أي هل النظام السياسي حقاً يمثل الشعب أم مجرد صراع حزبي كما في بلدي العراق.-
  
  بعض المقتطفات من الكتاب:
  
  

  
  " لم تعد هناك من قضية سوى القضية الأقدم ألا وهي قضية الحرية إزاء الاستبداد."
  
  
  " أعطني الحرية أو أعطني الموت."
  
  
  "إن الملوك يقودون الناس, والمصلحة تقود الملوك."
  
  
  "إلا أن الروح الثورية في القرون الأخيرة أي التوق إلى التحرر وإلى بناء بيت جديد حيث يمكن أن تستوطنه الحرية, هي روح لا مثيل لها في التاريخ السابق بأسره."
  
  
  " لقد استنتج من هذا أن الحرية والفقر هما أمران متضاربان."
  
  
  "إن الانتقام هو المنبع الوحيد للحرية, والآلهة الوحيدة التي علينا أن نقدم الأضاحي إلى مذبحها."
  
  
  " كما أنه ما من ثورة,مهما كان التذمر واسعاُ والتآمر منتشراُ في قطر ما, جاءت فتنة على الإطلاق."
  
  
  "آن عشرة رجال يعملون معاً يمكنهم, كما قال ميرابو ذات مرة, أن يجعلوا مئة ألف ترتعد فرائصهم وهم متفرقون."
  
  
  "ليس هناك ما هو أكثر عقماُ من تمرد وتحرير إلا إذا أعقبها دستور للحرية التي كسبت أخيراُ. ذلك أنه(لا قواعد الأخلاق ولا الغنى ولا انضباط الجيش, , ولا كل هذه مجتمعة ستكون وافية بالغرض من دون دستور) جون آدمز"
  
  
  "ما كان ينبغي أن يكون واضحاُ منذ البداية, وهو أن الإرادة المزعومة للجماهير...تتغير باستمرار, وأن هيكلاُ يبنى عليها على أنها أساسه إنما يبنى على رمال متحركة."
  
  
  "إن ذلك الذي يبدأ أي مجتمع سياسي ويكونه فعلياُ ما هو إلا قبول أي عدد من الرجال الأحرار القادرين على تكوين أغلبية لكي تتخذ وتشترك في مجتمع كهذا ثم يدعو هذا الفعل بانه البداية لأي حكومة قانونية في العالم."
  
  
  "إن القانون الثوري هو قانون غرضه الحفاظ على الثورة وتسريع أو تنظيم أداة مسارها."
  
  
  "بأن الدرس الأشد وضوحاُ الذي يمكن تعلمه من الثورة الفرنسية هو أن الرعب باعتباره وسيلة لتحقيق السعادة قد أدى بالثورات إلى مصيرها المحتوم."
  
  
  "ليس هناك من شيء غير قابل للتغيير سوى حقوق الإنسان الثابتة, وعد من بينها الحق بالتمرد والحق بالثورة."
  
  
  "أن شجرة الحرية يجب أن تسقى من وقت إلى آخر بدماء المواطنين وبدماء الطغاة, فهذه الدماء هي سماد الشجرة الطبيعي."
  
  
  "إذ أن السلطة الوحيدة التي يحتفظ بها الشعب هي ( السلطة الاحتياطية للثورة)."
  
  
  "أنه لخوف عظيم يخافه البشر, حتى الأكثر ��اديكالية والأقل تقليدية منهم, من أمور لم تشاهد منن قبل أبداُ. ومن أفكار لم يفكر بها أحد قط, ومن مؤسسات لم تجرب من قبل قط."
  
  
  "كان توكفيل قد قال في عام 1848 إن النظام الملكي قد سقط (قبل الضربات التي وجهها له المنتصرون, ولم يسقط تحت هذه الضربات, ولقد فوجئ المنتصرون بنصرهم كما فوجئ المنهزمون بهزيمتهم), وهو قول قد ثبتت صحته مراراُ وتكراراُ."
  
  

  
  
• 
  Sean Chick

  Hannah Arendt was a much more perceptive critic of the French Revolution than Burke, although she had the virtue of hindsight. In On Revolution (1963), Arendt made the provocative claim that the American Revolution was actually more ambitious than the French Revolution, although it failed to set the world ablaze. On Revolution is a work of dichotomies. Arendt claimed that the French Revolution was a struggle over scarcity and inequality, while the American Revolution was quest to secure political freedom. The Americans were more civic minded, while the French were obsessed with liberation, which is simply freedom from a tyrant. The French were driven by desperation, for while the French Revolutionaries were sincere men, they had set themselves the impossible task of alleviating the misery of the masses through political means. The Americans, living in a land of plenty and having a tradition of freedom, were trying to create a unique state, making their revolution far more civic. It was these more purely public goals that Arendt preferred to the more material goals of the French Revolution.
  
  On the surface, Arendt offered a modern recasting of Burke, for she found the violence of the French Revolution to be inevitable and she confirmed Burke’s fears that the revolution would have a baleful influence upon later generations. Yet, at the heart of it the two were very much in disagreement. Burke’s continuing appeal lies in his reputation as the founding intellectual of conservatism. Arguably the ultimate connecting thread in all conservatism is an abiding faith in the “natural” inequality of the universe. For this reason, Burke was antidemocratic, because such a system rejects the hierarchy of life, as ordained by god and nature. To Burke aristocrats, because of the training and experience they receive, are the proper rulers of men. This is why conservatives, from George Fitzhugh to Russell Kirk, have found Burke beguiling, even as they lived in democratic societies. Conservatism, by simply having a respect for inequality, can survive and even thrive in a democracy, where once conservatives could not stomach the thought. Arendt, by contrast, argued for more peaceful means to achieve revolution and had a far greater affection for democracy. Arendt, while not a radical, was clearly not in favor of Burke’s unequal society where change occurred slowly. If anything, Arendt rightfully feared that Burkean societies actually bred the conditions that led to the French Revolution. Arendt may not share the optimism of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1792), but they both share a belief that government is a construct of man, not an organic system ordained by god and shackled to tradition.
  
  Arendt’s work is more in line with that of Tocqueville. Like Tocqueville, Arendt found material goals in revolutions to be odious. In this way she supports Tocqueville’s assertion that if people want freedom not for its own sake, but for material reasons, then freedom will fall to tyranny. If material, self-interested behavior is the sole inspiration for action then people may vote for a government that gives them economic stability at the price of political freedom. Arendt’s contribution was that she saw this material motive as the true basis for the French Revolution, and therefore the reason why it turned towards terror and tyranny. Also, Arendt believed that ward republics in the tradition of Jefferson were a means to maintain civic virtues and a healthy dose of local government. She had perhaps noted Tocqueville’s distaste for centralization, who believed that it made the French Revolution’s turn toward tyranny all the more inevitable. Tocqueville had seen and generally admired the local governments of America, something Arendt wanted to see restarted in her day, when more central authority held sway in America. By contrast Burke ignored the American experience in his work, for while he famously supported the American Revolution, he ignored its course after 1776. As R. R. Palmer pointed out, Burke never bothered to examine the new state constitutions in America, documents that the nascent French Revolutionaries poured over.
• 
  Kevin

  Arendt’s On Revolution is a concerted attempt at bringing the resources of political philosophy, social psychology and historical analysis to bear on the recurring phenomenon of revolution.
  
  Arendt begins by asserting that all true revolutions are fueled by either ideology (internal) or terror (external). This is anchored in philosophical references extending as far back as Plato and Aristotle, and historical examples drawn primarily from the French Revolution of 1799 and the American Revolution of 1776.
  
  Any attempt on my part to break down Arendt’s intellectual foray into the cause and effect of sociopolitical upheaval would be either a short oversimplification or a long-winded (tedious) scrutinization and neither would do her justice. So allow me to throw a few notes your way before I saunter off to read Bukowski or Nietzsche:
  
  * The French Revolution was essentially a disaster and yet its consequences reverberated throughout the world. The American Revolution, on the other hand, was a success but had virtually no substantial effect on a global scale.
  
  * The role of the modern army has devolved from that of protector to that of belated and futile avenger.
  
  * Revolutions can only exist when there are a significant number of men who are willing to accept its collapse if it fails and who are willing to accept positions of authority if it succeeds.
  
  * Freedom is more prevalent in countries that either have never had a revolution or where a revolution was defeated than it is in countries were a revolution was successful.
  
  * No revolution, no matter how wide it opened the gates of privilege to the poor, was ever initiated by the poor.
  
  * The two party system was conceived as a constitutional alliance and was intended to act as a check-and-balance, but in reality the opposing interests cancel each other out in a manner that renders the system impotent and ineffective.
  
  “…the age old distinction between ruler and ruled, which the [American] revolution had set out to abolish through the establishment of a republic, has asserted itself again. Once more the people are not admitted to the public realm, once more the business of government has become the privilege of the few… The result is that people must either sink into lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty, or preserve the spirit of resistance to whatever government they have elected since the only power they retain is the reserve power of revolution.” ~Hannah Arendt, 1963
  
  “When a subject people believe that they will outlive an oppressive regime, a revolution has begun.” ~Christopher Hitchens, 1985
• 
  Fatema Hassan , bahrain

  
  
  " سوء الفهم يجعل العالم يدور " مقولة لازمتني خلال شهور قرائتي لهذا الكتاب ، فبيننا وبين العالم سوء فهم كبير يجعلنا في حالة حراك متمرد وثوري معه ، نحن نسعى لنزيل سوء الفهم هذا ؛ الأمر المثير للسخرية أننا ونحن نحاول إزالته .. نحن نخلق سوء الفهم من جديد !
  
  الباحثة السياسية و الفيلسوفة الأمريكية من أصل يهودي ألماني " حنة آرندت " المتهمة بمعاداة السامية إثر كتابتها ل " إيخمان في القدس " وهو عبارة عن تحقيق حول قضية الضابط النازي إيخمان المتهم ب ارتكابه قضايا قتل جماعي بحق اليهود وعنونة تقرير الكتاب الفرعية ب" عاديّة الشر " إثر رصد عينيّ استنتجته من خلال المحاكمة آثار سخط اليهود عليها ، آرندت خلقت هالة سوء الفهم بهذا التقرير إذ كانت تبرر أمر لا يقبل التبرير من وجهة النظر اليهودية ..
  
  " في الثورة " هو بمثابة دراسة لأهم ثورتين في التاريخ ( الفرنسية و الأمريكية ) و التاريخ الثوري المحاكي الممتد في أعقابهما من خلال الثورات المتعاقبة و خصوصًا الثورة الروسية بقيادة لينين الذي تحققت نبؤته من خلال تلك المجريات في القرن العشرين ، تناقش آرندت مدى صحة مقولة " الثورة لا تكون إلا بصيغة فرنسية " و تشرح لنا كيف نالت الثورة الفرنسية تلك الشهرة المثالية والتي لا يزال الإعلام يتطرق لها قبالة التهميش للثورة الإمريكية رغم نجاحها من وجهة نظر آرندت .
  
  من خلال الفصل الأول " الحرب والثورة " تناقش أثر كل منهما على تحديد ملامح القرن العشرين و التحكم بفكر العلاقات السياسية فيه وامتداد علاقتهما ( الحرب و الثورة ) عبر القرن الثامن عشر فالتاسع عشر ومدى عكسية تلك العلاقة أو تصالحها ، والجدال الذي أفضى للوجود السياسي و القضية التاريخية الأقدم " الحرية إزاء الإستبداد " ، الحرب والثورة التي بقيتا الشغل الشاغل و القضيتين المركزيتين كان لهما مايبرر وجودهما في القرون الماضية ولكنها بقيتا رغم إنتهاء مبرراتهما العقدّية كما ترى آرندت و تستشهد بالثورة التقنية التي طالت بشتى أوجهها القرن العشرين فلو كان الصاروخ مدمرًا ( مثلًا ) فيما سبق لم يعد مبررًا لشن حرب دفاعية في وقتنا الحالي فلكل صاروخ تم اختراع صاروخ مضاد ،
  الصاروخ هنا هو تصغير لحقيقة تعرض الشعوب للإبادة في الحرب فماعاد هاجس الخوف من الإستبداد و الإبادة قائماً بوجود للمراوغة و الإكتشافات النظيفة و الكثير من السبل الإحترازية و الوقائية التي تقوم باقتلاع بذور الحرب ، تتطرق آرندت كذلك لمفهوم الحرية و نظرية الثورة كي تغيرا جذريًا في ظل معطيات مختلفة سياسيًا كسباق التسلح و مناورة زمن السلم و الحروب الباردة و الحالة المعنوية للجنود و تغير مواقف الجنود والمدنيين و الدولة والجيش وظهور الرادع
  الذي يقلب المعادلات كما في حالة الجيش والشعب وكيف بات المفهوم الحالي لهما متقلقلاً فبعد أن كان الجيش يحمي الشعب أصبح يردع الشعب و ما ينطوي عليه موقفه الرادع من تبديل لطبيعة الحرب و الثورة ، كل حرب تكون بمثابة تهديد مباشر بإبادة كلية وكل ثورة تكون قيادة هدفها الحرية لذلك كانت " الحرية إزاء الإستبداد " الثورات تتعاقب يتزعمها من يزعم أنه الأقدر على تحقيقها وتوزيع السلطات الدنيوية وفق قوانين طبيعية وإلهية منوطة به وحده .. هكذا تفسر آرندت مبدأ " الحرية إزاء الإستبداد "هذا .
  
  و قياسا بقِدم الحروب فالثورة وليدة عصرنا الحديث ومن أهم مبررات الحرب القديمة و التقليدية والتي لم تكون بالضرورة تهدف للحرية إل ما ندر ( ١- الإعتقاد ان العلاقات السياسية في سياقها الإعتيادي لا تقع تحت رحمة العنف حيث كان الاقناع بديل وارد ، ٢-حروب عادلة وغير عادلة و العادلة فيعود ذلك لقداستها / السلاح مقدس بمعنى إن الدفاع حق مشروع / فالحروب في القرون الماضية لم تكن تضع حدّ فاصل يحمل أدنى أهمية بين كونها دفاعية أو عدوانية )
  
  من أبرز الفروق التي تلمّح لها آرندت في هذا الكتاب بين الثورتين .. الثورة الفرنسية التي أسقطت الباستيل و قامت لما عاناه الشعب من إظطهاد و جوع و ظلم في المرتبة الأولى كانت حركة من الداخل المطلق نحو الخارج المطلق وهذا مابرر سقوط الباستيل قبل ثورة الشعب ، الثورة الفرنسية لم تكن تملك ذات السلاح والآلة القمعية و عنف ما تلاها من الثورات
  فالتطور الذي باغت الثورات التي تلت الثورة الفرنسية جعل التدمير يستبعد أي عقلانية في الإستخدام إلى حدّ ما ، ولكن بالعودة لوقت حدوثها ( الثورة الفرنسية ) كانت تعتبر كحالة تمرد من قبل النظام وذلك من خلال الحوار القصير بين لويس السادس عشر و ليانكورت حين آتاه يخبره بسقوط الباستيل فصاح لويس السادس عشر ( إنه تمرد ) فرد عليه ليانكورت ( لا ياصاحب الجلالة ، إنها ثورة ) بحسب آرندت هذا دليل على قدم الحرب و حداثة الثورة ، فكان التمرد وارد ولك��ه يدل على قوة النظام على إي حال لكن بمجرد إلباسه لهذا المسمى الجديد ( ثورة ) فهو يتحول لكيان سياسي يسقط سيطرة إي نظام ، مصطلح الثورة من خلال هذا الحوار و بجِدّته قبل أن يتخذ شكل هجوم شعبي ويقود لحرب كان مدويّا كفاية ليترسخ في عقلية التاريخ ، بعد نجاح الثورة الفرنسية و من خلال ثورة الشعب بزغ رجال الثورة الذي تسلقوا على أكتاف الثورة و التفوا على انجازاتها ومن أشهرهم المحامي مكسمليان روبسبير الذي حول فرنسا لمجازر يومية مستغلاً سلطته وكان خطيبًا مفوهً سيطر على عقل الشعب
  وكان يقتدي ويعمم مبادئ جان جاك روسو الذي يؤمن بنظرية العدو المشترك ليبقي الثورة مستمرة في أوار حماسها و الغريب أنه ينادي بمبدأ أن العدو المشترك الذي يجب التنبه له موجود بكل شخص وهو مصلحته الخاصة وبهذا كان هناك فصل بين هاجس الفرد و هاجس المواطن لتبقى إنجازات الثورة تحت سلطة روبسبير وحكمه ، تجنبًا لإي هيجان شعبي مما من شأنه تحويل الثورة لثورة مقابلة أو مضادة تستخرج رجال ثورة مضادين لرجال الثورة ( روبسبير ) وبهذا الثورة الفرنسية / افترست أبنائها / و انتهت بشكل كارثي سوّغت العنف و مجدته و ولدت الشفقة و تعكزت على الثورة لتصفية الثورة و ظهرت طبقة البرجوازيين و أصبح الرعب أداة لتسريع زخم الثورة وانتشر الفساد والبؤس كما تبين آرندت .
  
  الثورة في مسماها الحقيقي مصطلح فلكي لكوبر نيكس مفاده شرح للحركة المستمرة والدائرية للنجوم و حين نزلت هذه الحركة كمفهوم من السماء للأرض لم تتعدى حدود المصطلح المجازي فكانت تشير لحركة مستمرة يستعيد الشعب الذي يرزح تحت الظلم والقهر من خلالها السيطرة على مصيره من بين براثن النظام السلطوي المتجبر سياسياً كان أو ديني ، بهذا تفند آرندت كون الثورة مسيحية الأصل إذا إنها تهدف لفصل السياسية عن الدين و تعطي الأفضلية للمصلحة العامة وهذا كما تراه آرندت قمة العلمانية ،
  الثورة الأمريكية التي لم تفترس أبنائها على غرار الثورة الفرنسية فهي قائمة أساساً في بلد جديد لتفرض سلطة جديدة ثارت على مصطلح الثورة ذاته فلم تعد تنتزع السلطة من أحد ( بحسب آرندت رغم ان الثورة الامريكية تعتبر استعمارية وقائمة على إنكار صاحب الأرض و اضطهاد المختلف في العرق و اللون ) كما دعمتها إمكانيات الرخاء والسعي وراء السعادة على عكس الحالة الإجتماعية المزرية التي انتفض بها الثائرون الفرنسيون
  ( الحرية ثمرة الضرورة ) و نتيجة لضغط الظروف الإقتصادية في فرنسا و أوروبا ككل نشأت حركة الهجرة لإيجاد البديل من خلال كيان جديد انفصلت المعنى في الثورة عند الفرنسيون والأمريكيون وبقى الروس مغفلي التاريخ كما تسميهم آرندت .
  
  كما أشارت آرندت لدور فلاسفة عصر التنوير الأوربيون الذي نهضت فلسفتهم بالحراك الثوري و لكنها ترفض فكرة كون فلسفتهم هي من أشعل فتيل الثورة ،
  الثورة الفرنسية ك ( ضرورة تاريخية ) في مواجهة الثورة الأمريكية التي كانت ( تحسين ) تحول ل( حاجة ) .. فهل تتساوى الضروريات والحاجات ؟ العقول المهووسة بالتحرير مقابل العقول الحضارية والتأسيسية و دحرالبؤس مقابل السعي وراء السعادة .. تكوين الحرية كهدف نهائي للثورة هل يتساوى مع تعويض الحرية ؟
  
  الرابح هو من يفهم الثورة ويقرأها قراءة صحيحة بينما يفشل من لا يفقه ذلك الفن .
  
  
  
  
  مقتطفات هامة :
  " إن الحروب والثورات قد حددت اليوم ملامح القرن العشرين "
  " لم تعد هناك من قضية سوى القضية الأقدم ألا وهي قضية الحرية إزاء الاستبداد "
  
  " إن الحروب من الناحية التاريخية هي أقدم الظواهر في الماضي المدّون ، في حين أن الثورات بنوع خاص لم تكن موجودة قبل ظهور العصر الحديث ، لا بل إنها من أحدث الوقائع السياسية الرئيسية "
  
  من المهم أن نتذكر أن فكرة الحرية إنما أدخلت في النقاش الجاري بشأن مسألة الحرب بعد أن اتضح إننا قد بلغنا مرحلة من التطور الثقافي ، حتى غدت وسائل التدمير بشكل يستبعد استخدامها العقلاني "
  
  " إن الإفصاح بصراحة و بهجة عن القول المأثور ( أعطني الحرية أو أعطني الموت ) بوجه التدمير الشنيع للحرب النووية فهو كلام أجوف لا بل كلام سخيف"
  
  " الحقيقة التي مفادها أن العلاقة المتداخلة للحرب و الثورة و التبادل المشترك بينهما ، وقد تزايد باطراد ، كما إن التأكيد في العلاقة قد انتقل تدريجيا من الحرب إلى الثورة "
  
  " يجب علينا ملاحظة أن الثورات و الحروب لا يمكن تصورهما خارج نطاق العنف " ـ ـ ـ " العنف نوع من أنواع القواسم المشتركة بينهما
  "
  " بسبب الصمت يكون العنف ظاهرة هامشية في الميدان السياسي، ذلك أن الإنسان وبقدر كونه كائنا سياسيا ، مزود بالقدرة على النطق. إن التعريفين المشهورين للإنسان اللذين وضعهما (أرسطو) ، الأول هو أنه كائن سياسي ، و الثاني أنه مزود بالنطق إنما يكمل أحدهما الآخر ، وكلاهما يشير إلى التجربة نفسها في حياة المدينة ـ الإغريقية "
  
  " من الحقيقة البديهية أن تقول إن التحرر و الحرية ليسا مثل بعضهما ، و ان التحرر قد يكون شرط الحرية ولكنه لا يقود إليها آليا ، وان فكرة الحرية التي ينطوي عليها التحرر لا يمكن أن تكون إلا سلبية ، لذا فحتى النية بالتحرر لا تتشابه مع الرغبة في الحرية . "
  
  " إن مكيافيللي كان أول من تصور نشوء ميدان علماني صرف قوانينه و مبادئه للعمل مستقلة عن تعاليم الكنسية على وجه الخصوص ، وتتج��وز مستوياته الأخلاقية مجمل الشؤون الإنسانية عموما ، لذلك أصر مكيافيللي على أن الذين يريدون دخول السياسة ان يتعلموا أولا ( كيف يكونون غير طيبين ) "
  
  " إن كلمة "ثورة " كانت بالأصل مصطلحا فلكيا اكتسب أهميته المتزايدة من خلال كتاب كوبر نيكوس "
  
  " لقد كانت الضرورة و الحاجات الملحة للناس هي التي أطلقت العنان للرعب و أدت بالثورة إلى مصيرها المحتوم "
  
  " إن الفكرة القائلة بان الفقر ينبغي أن يساعد الناس على كسر أغلال الاضطهاد و ذلك لان الفقراء ليس لديهم ما يخسرونه سوى أصفادهم ، هي فكرة غدت مألوفة من خلال كتابات ماركس ، حتى أننا كدنا ننسى أنها فكرة لم تكن معروفة قبل اندلاع الثورة الفرنسية "
  
  " إن كلمة الشعب هي الكلمة المفتاح لفهم الثورة الفرنسية "
  
  " يجب إرجاع كل التعاريف إلى الوعي ، إما الفكر فهو سفسطائي يقود كل الخصال إلى المقصلة ـ روسو "
  
  " إن الشفقة تلغي المسافة ، أي الحيز الدنيوي بين الناس ، حيث تقع الأمور السياسية و يقع ميدان الشؤون الإنسانية بأسره "
  
  " لعل الإشفاق هو تحريف للشفقة ، ولكن بديله هو التضامن ، وانه من خلال الإشفاق يغدو الإنسان منجذبا نحو الناس الضعفاء ولكن من خلال التضامن يقوم الإنسان عمدا وبهدوء بإقامة مجموعة من المصالح مع المضطهدين و المستغلين"
  
  " إن الرعب بصفته أداة مؤسسية استخدمت عمدا لتسريع زخم الثورة "
  
  " إن الضرورة و العنف كلاهما جعل البؤساء لا يقاومون قوة الأرض "
• 
  JJ Khodadadi

  دربارهٔ انقلاب کتابی است که در سال ۱۹۶۳ توسط هانا آرنت نظریه‌پرداز سیاسی نوشته شد. در این کتاب، آرنت مقایسه‌ای از دو انقلاب اصلی قرن هجدهم، یعنی انقلاب آمریکا و انقلاب فرانسه ارائه می‌دهد.
  (ویکی پدیا)
• 
  Justin Evans

  If you know nothing about Arendt, I imagine this book will be incomprehensible and at the same time seem really radical. Knowing a little bit about her, as I do, rather undermines that. Perhaps if you know a lot about her, you can swing back round to radical? That would be nice.
  
  Arendt argues that the American revolution should have been the model for the 20th century revolutions in, e.g., South America and Africa, but instead the revolutionaries took the French revolution as their model. At the same time, she's not interested in pretending that 20th century America has anything to do with Revolutionary America (the best thing about Arendt, by far, is that she just doesn't say what you expect people to say. Defenders of the American Revolution today say that America is more or less a fulfillment of the 'founders'' intentions, but needs to be more like them (either by being more democratic, or by being more libertarian). Arendt says America today is really pretty unpleasant. Refreshing).
  
  Why take the U.S. revolution as a model? Because it was not concerned with the 'social question.' The U.S. revolution, on Arendt's understanding, was entirely concerned with *creating* a strong state, which could hold together the various colonies, and provide an enduring space of political action. It was primarily a political, not a social, revolution.
  
  The French revolution took place in a very different context: mass impoverishment. Once the revolutionaries had taken power, their attention was naturally diverted to this enormous inequality. They started to see themselves as defenders of The People--not a polity. And once you're on the side of the people, Arendt argues, you naturally accept no limitations on your own power. Hence, the terror.
  
  Weird as this is, it gets even weirder when she explains why the U.S. revolution did not ultimately succeed: because poor people immigrated to the U.S. from Europe. Poor people don't care about 'politics,' so the space for discussion the founders set up was allowed to atrophy.
  
  In other words, she wants to say that there can be no successful revolution where there are poor people. Why would you want a revolution where there are no poor people? So a self-chosen elite (her term) can talk about things rationally in a space set up for such discussions. What would they talk about? It's unclear.
  
  How can Arendt combine great analytical rigor and an understanding of historical context (e.g., the American revolution could call on pre-existing legal and political systems at the state and municipal level, and needed only to replace the 'crown' as the sovereign, whereas the French revolution did not have such a history to draw upon, and felt the need to create everything anew, with terrible consequences) with claims as erroneous as her suggestion that the U.S. formalized and institutionalized the idea of political opposition (there is no 'opposition' in the U.S., as far as I can tell, whereas there is in Westminster-derived systems), and as horrific as "poor immigrants ruined America"?
  
  As ever, her fear of structural *explanations* pushes her into political and even moral turpitude. The American revolution was not set up to deal with mass capitalist society, and so its institutions struggle in the present. But those concepts (mass, capitalist, society) aren't allowed into Arednt's analysis. To account for the failure of the American revolution--as interpreted according to Arendt's key concept of 'action'--she has to find an agent on whom to pin the blame. It must be the poor Europeans, because if you admit that there are poor Americans, you would have to explain how poor people came to exist in a country that, according to Arendt, lacked poverty until the 19th century.
  
  Don't tell the slaves.
• 
  Andrew

  As difficult as
  The Human Condition (see
  my review), and it takes longer to pick up steam. Luckily though, Arendt keeps the momentum building until the end, starting around Chapter 3. Overall, Arendt spends too long discussing abstract philosophical ideas and linguistic origins and not enough time discussing the practical distinctions among revolutions, and what makes them work or fail. When she does this, the book becomes much more interesting, although any enjoyment is still hampered by the almost unbearably long sentences, each filled with as many as five different ideas punctuated by hyphens, colons, commas and parentheses.
  
  Some sentences take several re-readings just to wrap your mind around everything she is trying to say. It is obvious the woman is brilliant (I've already used adjectives like "astounding" and "staggering" to describe her intellect in other reviews), but it's equally obvious that she either doesn't give a darn about bringing her ideas to a wider (read: "stupider") audience, or she's just not capable of adopting a more accessible writing style. I'm tempted to cite the former, just because
  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil did not suffer from the same shortcoming.
  
  As far as content, I can only give a partial rundown since the entire book is so dense. Her discussion of the differences between the American and French Revolutions was illuminating and persuasive. She posits that the success of a revolution depends on 1) it being free of the misery surrounding an impoverished populace and 2) its success in finding a sufficient authority to replace the deposed one. America got lucky, starting from scratch, and the success of their and any revolution was dependent upon a foundation -- in the American case, the foundation of a constitution and new form of government, which is something the French and most subsequent revolutions failed to do.
  
  At the same time, The American revolution dwindled and the "revolutionary spirit" eventually died away because the founders did not do enough to protect it when enshrining the Constitution. She says they could have done this by protecting the political rights and freedom of the townships and town meetings. These small groups or "councils," she claims, are vital aspects that spring organically from any revolutionary movement and are the only outlet for true political expression by the common citizen. They therefore must be nurtured in a symbiotic relationship with the state if freedom is to be preserved.
  
  The conclusion is particularly impressive, when she actually suggests a return to the ancient Greco-Roman political system in which not everyone votes, only those who are sufficiently interested in the political process. This government would inherently be both self-chosen and self-including. In this way, people not concerned with their public freedom are not forced to participate and can instead focus on their private lives, while people to whom politics does indeed matter will never be excluded from political decisions (as they inevitably are in our current representative system). I honestly don't know enough about political or revolutionary theory to agree or disagree with her authoritatively, and their are obvious obstacles to implementing this plan in our current climate (cough cough -- corporate money). But despite leaving herself open to charges of elitism I can say at least that her arguments are persuasive, even intuitive despite their complexity.
  
  The ideas here are essential, but the packaging is unfortunately repellent. I would not recommend starting your exposure to Arendt with this book. Probably better to start with the far easier Eichmann, and then move onto the more important Human Condition. But this one is important nonetheless, especially for anyone interested in political theory or the concept of freedom.
  
  
  Not Bad Reviews
  
  
  @pointblaek
• 
  Mila

  This book's conception of politics and the political is narrow and elitist, and its portrayal of Marx was not accurate. But what made it exceptionally lacking was the way it treated the American revolution. While Arendt acknowledges slavery and colonialism, she brushes it aside so it does not challenge her idealistic picture of the US revolution and US society. Neil Roberts, in "Freedom as Marronage", provides an excellent overview of why Arendt's argument has undertones of anti-blackness.
• 
  Micah

  a lot of people told me this book is very bad. turns out, they're correct
• 
  Aubrey

  2.5/5

  The Greeks held that no one can be free except among [their] peers, that therefore neither the tyrant nor the despot nor the master of a household—even though [they were] full liberated and [were] not forced by others—was free.
  
  As no [one] shall show me a Commonwealth born straight that ever became crooked, so no [one] shall show me a Commonwealth born crooked that ever became straight.
  
  –James Harrington

  Contrary to appearances, I don't regret reading this. True, it took forever, but that's what happens when you start a densely theoretical book around the same time you begin studying for a standardized evaluation of all of English literature (impossible as it is). Also true is that I didn't get much out of it, proportionate to its word count, but if all I had gotten out of it had been compacted into 20 or 30 pages or so,
  I would count it as one of the most valuable pamphlets I had ever read. I disagreed with around 60% of what I read, couldn't fully translate 2% (my modicums of French and German helped), but I have no Ancient Greek to my name, and acknowledge that the remaining 38% needs to be wrenched out of its context to serve any purpose, but the important thing is that I'm done and ready to move on.

  Only where the majority, after the decision has been taken, proceeds to liquidate politically, and in extreme cases physically, the opposing minority, does the technical device of majority decision degenerate into majority rule.
  
  If Marx helped in liberating the poor, then it was not by telling them that they were the living embodiments of some historical or other necessity, but by persuading them that poverty itself is a political, not a natural phenomenon, the result of violence and violation rather than of scarcity.
  
  The trouble was that the struggle to abolish poverty, under the impact of a continual mass immigration from Europe, fell more and more under the sway of the poor themselves, and hence came under the guidance of the ideals born out of poverty, as distinguished from those principles which had inspired the foundation of freedom.

  For those who need a map, I found the first quote immensely valuable, the second workable when removed from Arendt's attempt to discredit it, and the third trash. There are many people who need the image of the hierarchy of needs shoved in their faces on a daily basis. In the case of Arendet's much rhapsodized on United States, this regimen should be accompanied by a firm dose of this country's actual history, genocide and enslavement and all. Otherwise, you're going to get mystical nonsense such as the poor must exist, they will be inevitably and permanently corrupted by their poverty, and those who are not poor are in no way enabling the existence of their antithesis through the various means of corruption, greed, and capitalism. I don't know about the 1960's when this book was first published, but today, it's a fact that the world produces more than enough food for all its citizens, there are more houses than homeless people in the US, and that grocery marts and restaurants and elementary school kitchens would rather punish poor people with the destruction of food than feed those who need it with the excess. As such, people starve in the streets while scarcity is nowhere to be found. When considering all the piled on myths I've had to pull myself out from under since grade school, I am doubtful that the implication that this state of potential anti-poverty wasn't possible till recent times is valid. Disabled people received more care in Neolithic societies than they are, on average, considered worthy of today, so progress is only a thing if brainwashing's your style.

  What [Jefferson] perceived to be a mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of being republicans and of acting as citizens. In other words, the danger was that all power had been given to the people in their private capacity, and that there was no space established for them in their capacity of being citizens…For just as there could not be much substance to neighborly love if one’s neighbor should make a brief apparition once every two years, so there could not be much substance to the admonition to love one’s country more than oneself unless the country was a living presence in the midst of its citizens.

  When the most valuable concept in a work is derived from a historically racist rapist, you know something's wrong. Nevertheless, I'm not saying you shouldn't read
  Clotel: or, The President's Daughter if you refer to an idea credited to the book's infamous inspiration. There's nothing new under the sun, so the only solution is to critically engage with that which was spawned from vile sources and attempt to pay reparations for said vileness by seeking a newly humane world order. Jefferson imagined councils made up of a hundred citizens with the entirety of the US' population divided into said hundreds, through which elections would be rendered far less inadequate and politics would be, for the first time, handed to the citizens. It all seems very unrealistic when capitalism is considered, but the fact that classes on government are shunted off till the period after students are accepted into college, voting is set on working weekdays, and work in and of itself does not set aside time for debate, dialectic, and direct involvement with legal concerns can't all be chalked up to an unconscious inevitability of the free market, aka your money or your life. I don't know how it would work, but considering the existence of the Internet, modern technology, the We the People website, and how much money Big Brother already spends stamping out today's "little republics", it would be possible if all the whiny brats still clinging to their capitalism would grow up and start paying it forward till the point that this necessary political work could be done.

  [Rousseau] took his cue from the common experience that two conflicting interests will bind themselves together when they are confronted by a third that equally opposes them both. Politically speaking, he presupposed the existence and relied upon the unifying power of the common national enemy. Only in the presence of the enemy can such a thing as la nation une et indivisible, the ideal of French and of all other nationalism, come to pass. Hence, national unity can assert itself only in foreign affairs, under circumstances of, at least, potential hostility. This conclusion has been the seldom-admitted stock-in-trade of national politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries[.]
  
  Fear of revolution has been the hidden leitmotif of postwar American foreign policy in it desperate attempts at stabilization of the status quo, with the result that American power and prestige were used and misused to support obsolete and corrupt political regimes that long since had become objects of hatred and contempt among their own citizens.
  
  [I]n politics, obedience and support are the same.
  
  The record of the secret police in fostering rather than preventing revolutionary activities is especially striking in France during the Second Empire and in Czarist Russia after 1880. It seems, for example that there was not a single anti-government action under Louis Napoleon which had not been inspired by the police; and the more important terrorist attacks in Russia prior to war and revolution seem all to have been police jobs.

  The rest of these quotes display how Arendt knew what she was doing when she wasn't busy ignoring pretty much everything that interfered with her solipsistic philosophical discussions (such as the fact that a lot of countries hated the UK and were more than willing to help its errant colonies out, whereas France was a much closer and much scarier radical threat that had to be suppressed posthaste). I'm also a lot more intrigued by the idea of reading all the ancient Greeks and Romans and less ancient French and German sources that she derives her thinking from, especially when considering how the infamous Plato and Aristotle are a mere drop in the pond and are only focused on because they fit the 'Western' agenda of oligarchy masquerading as democracy the best. However, I have to say: I'm just real fucking glad to be done.
• 
  Mohammed Yusuf

  
  ارندت بدأت بحفريات فوكو في تتبع معنى الثورة وانتهت بتمجيدات للثورة الأمريكية في مقابل الثورات الفرنسية والروسية وغيرها اهتمت بما بعد الثورة أكثر و غاصت في مواضيع كثيرة مهمة
  في عقلانيتها ترى أن الدستور والفدرالية ومجلس الشيوخ هي علامات فارقة بين ثورة أمريكا وغيرها من الثورات وهذه النقاط مهم استصحابها معنا في بلدنا السودان الثائر حاليا مع ان حال شعبنا يتشابه والشعب الفرنسي ما قبل الثورة
  مما ركزت عليه هو مفهوم الحرية مقابل التحرر ، فالحرية عندها ان تكون فاعل سياسي مقابل التحرر والذي هو خروج من القيود، المجتمعات المقهورة ما قبل ثوراتها كانت خارج الفضاء السياسي لكنه تكشف لها تماما بعد الثورات مع ذلك ظهر المأزق مع حكومات أعادت الحال لما هو عليه قبل الثورة فالبرلمان و الأحزاب تعبر عن قلة أو نخب بعينها بينما الشعب الذي قاد الثورة عاد إلى الخلف في موقف المتفرج
  كما ذكرت هي مهتمة بتبيين قوة الثورة الأمريكية التي لم تصل العالم بالقدر الكافي مع نجاحها بشدة داخل البلد نسبة لقلة الإنتاج الفكري ما بعد الثورة مقارنة بالفرنسية التي صاحبها إنتاج فكري عالي أثناء وبعد الثورة رغم فشلها في بلادها وتعزي ذلك الفشل ان الثورة الفرنسية تحققت فوجدت أمامها الشعب لا يتوق للحرية فقط بل لمطالبات الحياة أيضا ولأنها وضعت الشعب فقط نصب عينيها فقدت استقرارها
  كتاب جميل وممتع
• 
  Dan

  Arendt's insights and passion for politics/action are both amazing and contagious. Here she goes back to the French and American revolutions and provides multiple explanations why the first failed, but continued to inspire countless other revolutions; while the second one was extremely successful, but failed into oblivion. It all boils down to the absolute goal of any revolution to bring freedom along with the inevitable ending of all revolution in institutions that turn against freedom. From this paradox springs the so-called “perpetual revolution” that many of the radical theoreticians/politicians advocated – from Jefferson and Robespierre to Lenin and Trotsky. Arendt also dreamed of such a perpetual revolution that may/will renew our political passions, practices, and systems.
• 
  Alex

  O carte grea, densa, in care Arendt alearga din Grecia Antica in America lui Thomas Jefferson, si din Franta lui Robespierre, in Rusia lui Lenin. A fost un chin, de cateva ori am vrut sa renunt, dar in final sunt incantat ca am reusit sa o termin si sa si inteleg o gramada de notiuni politice.
  
  Deja ma bucur la idea de o reciti peste cativa ani.
  
  
  Jefferson, though the secret vote was still unknown at the time, had at least a foreboding of how dangerous it might be to allow the people a share in public power, without providing them at the same time with more public space than the ballot box and with more opportunity to make their voices heard in public than election day. What he perceived to be the mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of BEING republicans and of ACTING as citizens.
  
  --- va urma ---
• 
  Ali

  یکی از محورهای نظریه آرنت درباره انقلاب این است که مردم امریکا پیش از قیام برای استقلال از انگلستان، دموکراسی شهری و ناحیه ای را تجربه کرده بودند. آنها شماری شهرهای خودگردان داشتند. به اعتقاد او احزاب رقیب شوراها هستند. احزاب مانع از تحقق کامل مشارکت همگانی می شوند، ولی شوراها می توانند این کاستی احزاب را پر کنند
• 
  David

  A mixed bag, but with some great bits. I'm sure thousands of people have critiqued the book similarly. It is certainly a product of its time (1963), and that perhaps excuses some of its faults. It is certainly rather rah-rah about the United States of America, which makes it a fascinating read now, as this country is in obvious and steep decline. Indeed, late in this book as she discusses town councils and the idea of locally engaged citizenry, and how this seems to be the only real problem with the US Constitution, it is hard to argue. This, indeed, is prescient. Where Arendt's work is less convincing is in its seemingly endless critique of every other revolution. For one thing, if you're going to spend so much time praising the genius of America, it would certainly behoove you to make more than passing discussion of the sources of its early prosperity (enslaved labor, stolen land, violence against humans defined to be nonhuman). To be generous, we might hope she would do better on this count if she could re-write it in 2018. The other problem, which one alway sees in conservative writers (which she is, at least by European standards -- she'd have no truck with the Trump White Authoritarian GOP), is the weary and self-impressed pose of being the adult in the room, the one who, unlike those naive leftists, admits the fallenness of human nature and the necessity with which to reckon with it in the organization of human life. This pose would be annoying on its own, but is especially annoying when it is conveniently forgotten anytime the writer needs something to be good. (Obviously the masses cannot be trusted to be good, but the police, when mentioned, are assumed to be stalwart, kind, above reproach, unbiased, true unblemished instruments of justice. I mean, please.) And of course she will also blithely assume, tossing it out the side of her mouth without even a hint of argument or support, that obviously the state can do nothing to help increase human happiness.
  
  So, as I said, a mixed bag. But worth a look, if only to see the ways what she praises (and also warns about) in the American system have been lately cracking, buckling, breaking and falling to ruin. (Which reminds me of one other rather hilarious aspect of her argument: she spends full pages decrying the awful depredations unavoidable in a one-party system, and seems also dismissive of 3-or-more party systems as too ineffective. Which leaves this emergent two-party setup in the USA as some sort of Goldilocks' baby-bear "just right" number of parties, which, again, maybe that was less of a howler in 1963, but at this point we're living through the hell of two-parties, both corporate owned, and offering very little range of policy options. (Who do you vote for if you don't want to be constantly at war with weak, poor, failing countries for no reason (ahem, enriching arms dealers) for your entire life?) Sigh.)
  
  So, a third time: a mixed bag. Your mileage may vary. (Her Eichmann book is awesome though.)
• 
  Anna

  I previously tried and failed to read ‘On Revolution’ back in 2013. It isn’t the easiest thing to get into, not because Arendt’s writing is obscure or confusing but because every paragraph contains a high density of ideas. The whole book is saturated in erudition, including many quotations in French, Latin, and Ancient Greek. It demands and rewards concentration from the reader. As a consequence, I read the latter 250 pages in two chunks just after drinking strong coffee. Your brain needs to be focused in order to appreciate this book, it seems. Arendt’s central thesis is that the American and French revolutions were substantially different on various fronts and that these differences provide useful lessons for the 20th century. Her analysis is subtle and nuanced; it gave me a great deal to think about.
  
  I’d previously read commentary somewhere on how the American revolution began from a situation of relative plenty, as this New World was empty and full of natural resources. (Or seemed so after genocide of the indigenous inhabitants.) By contrast, the French Revolution was driven on by the urban poor rebelling against their struggle for subsistence. America didn’t really have an equivalent of sans-culottes; it had slaves instead. Arendt explores the consequences:
  
  

  Since [the Enlightenment], the passion of compassion has haunted and driven the best men of all revolutions, and the only revolution in which compassion played no role in the motivation of the actors was the American Revolution. If it were not for the presence of Negro slavery on the American scene, one would be tempted to explain this striking aspect exclusively by American prosperity, by Jefferson’s ‘lovely equality’, or by the fact that American was indeed, in William Penn’s words ‘a good poor man’s country’. As it is, we are tempted to ask ourselves if goodness of the poor white man’s country did not depend to a considerable degree upon black labour and black misery. [...] We can only conclude that the institution of slavery carries an obscurity even blacker than the obscurity of poverty; the slave, not the poor man was ‘wholly overlooked’.

  
  
  That the American Revolution was unlike any other due to absence of compassion still seems to echo strongly in the present day, as does its reliance on an exploited underclass of people of colour. Indeed, reading Arendt’s detailed, often admiring analysis of how the American political system employs checks and balances is deeply depressing today. Arendt had faith in the resilience of the American political system to tyranny; today the United States is rotting from the top down. Other matters discussed in the book have equal resonance for current affairs. This passage inadvertently illuminates a danger of febrile political analysis on social media:
  
  

  To be sure, each deed has its motives as it has its goals and its principle; but the act itself, though it proclaims its goal and makes manifest its principle, does not reveal the innermost motivation of the agent. His motives remain dark, they do not shine but are hidden not only from others but, most of the time, from himself, from his self-inspection, as well. Hence, the search for motives, the demand that everybody display in public his innermost motivation, since it actually demands the impossible, transforms all actors into hypocrites; the moment the display of motives begins, hypocrisy begins to poison all human relations.

  
  
  I think this insight suggests one reason why current media discourse, which speculates endlessly about motives, undermines trust in all politicians. Hypocrisy is an elusive and dangerous thing. We are all hypocrites to some extent, as total consistency of principle and action is as impossible as it is undesirable; we must be willing to change with circumstances. But to what extent? Constant accusations of hypocrisy create a worrying moral equivalence between muddled motives and blatant dishonesty, as well as treating motives as more or equally important as actions. Recent experience suggests that is not going well.
  
  On the historical front, Arendt writes thoughtfully on how the actors of the French Revolution could not ever agree to disagree (as
  Ending the Terror put it) while those of the American Revolution were able to. Of course, neither managed to reckon with poverty and inequality, although at least in France it was acknowledged. Chapters four and five then proved heavy going, as they contain a great deal of constitutional theory. I found the subsequent final chapter much more engaging. This contains a farsighted comment on GDP, considering the book was first published in 1963: ‘Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead to freedom or constitute a proof for its existence’.
  
  Arendt also contemplates at length the role of spontaneous organisational councils during revolutions, noting that these are praxis and get little to no attention in theory. They aren’t the work of ‘professional revolutionaries’ and end up co-opted, purged, and/or crushed as revolutions evolve into a reconfigured political world. She sees them as a critical manifestation of revolutionary spirit. This and much else in the book draws careful links between ancient philosophies of government, revolutions of the 18th century, and representative democracy in the 20th. These continuities and contrasts also cast some provocative light on the ailing politics of the 21st century, which seem to be succumbing once more to authoritarianism. Arendt has a fascinating and original perspective, albeit one that’s hard to distill into simple maxims. She is too considered and subtle a writer for that.
• 
  Leticia

  (Li em português - Hannah Arendt - Sobre a Revolução) O livro não é exatamente o que eu esperava (talvez eu esperasse uma abordagem mais "romântica" da revolução...), ele aborda o tema da revolução principalmente a partir da Revolução Francesa e da Revolução Americana, mas achei bem legal. Recomendo muito o último capítulo, que é a parte que achei mais interessante no livro, com uma diferenciação legal sobre o sistema de conselhos e o sistema de partidos e como o cidadão é representado (ou não é) em cada um.
• 
  Derek

  Arendt does some great thinking about the nature of modern revolution, and about the originality of the American and French Revolutions in particular. She contrasts modern revolutions with Greek, medieval, Renaissance, and even Puritan rebellions and political transformations.
• 
  Nicolás Avendaño

  Really good book on the concept of political revolution and excellent comparative study between the French Revolution and the North American Revolution
• 
  sidana

  "En radikal devrimci bile devrimin ertesi günü muhafazakar olacak."
  
  “Devrimler daima, başlangıç aşamalarında hayret verici bir kolaylıkla başarılı olurlar; çünkü devrimleri başlatanların yaptığı, düpedüz dağılma içindeki bir rejimin iktidarını toplamaktan ibarettir. Devrimler, asla siyasal otoritenin çöküşünün sebepleri değil, aksine sonuçlarıdır.”
  
  “Kendini kandırma ve iktidar dürtüsü, profesyonel devrimcileri halkın devrimci organlarına düşman eden nihai unsurlar değildi; devrimci partilerin diğer partilerle paylaştığı şeyler, daha ziyade temel inançlardı. Yönetimin amacının halkın refahı olduğu noktasında ve siyasetin özünün de eylem değil idare olduğu konusunda anlaşmışlardı. Bu bağlamda, sağdan sola bütün partilerin birbirleriyle olan ortak noktaları, devrimci grupların konseylerle bugüne dek kurabilmiş oldukları ortaklıktan daha fazladır."
  
  
• 
  Trashy Pit

  DEFINITELT DO NOT READ! A complete waste of time and ink and trees. A bunch of sophisticated-sounding nonsense and complicated yet meaningless bullshit that for some reason sounds really deep to people who have no knowledge of history.
• 
  Illiterate

  I like that Arendt approaches social science through intellectual history. But her history is distorted by her undefended preference for political over social goods.
• 
  Eileen

  "it was the polis, the space of men's free deeds and living words, which could endow life with splendour."
  
  i am very torn on arendt. she's a bit of an anomaly as far as theorists come; she somehow fuses a profound appreciation for the anarcho-communist (although she would never use this term) movements of the 19th and 20th century with a strange devotion to the american revolution and its founding fathers. i've seen her referenced by both right- and left-wing thinkers.
  
  her comparison of the american and french revolutions is certainly interesting, but she's sometimes too quick to impose binaries and other rigid definitional structures. i COMPLETELY disagree with her stance on the social question; i don't think we can so easily separate politics from economics, nor do i think we can build a robust public sphere without first ensuring safety and sufficiency in the "private" sphere (i use scare quotes here because what arendt refers to as private is not – and will likely never be – putatively outside of politics).
  
  also, for what it's worth, arendt – like most other theorists of the global north – seems only capable of offering revolutionary examples and models from euroamerica. what about the haitian revolution? indian independence? black nationalism? it's a little disappointing but not at all surprising.
• 
  AliReza Sha

  انقلاب
  انسان ها در اجتماع حاضر ميشن تا بر هم ظاهر بشن
  يعني تو اجتماعات شركت ميكنن كه با هم حرف بزنن خودشون ابراز كنند نه اينكه بيان ماشينشون و به هم نشون بدن
  
  از نظر آرنت انقلاب براي ايدئولوژي نيست هيچ وقت بلكه براي مسايل اقتصادي و... است
  
  ارنت در هيچ ايدئولوژي جاي نميگيره
• 
  Hugh

  In-between the ancient greek, latin, french and intellectual gatekeeping there was some super insightful ideas and analyses. Definitely recommend brushing up on some french and american revolutionary history before starting. Would love to hear what Arednt would have to say about the current state of American politics
• 
  Charles Haywood

  This is a book that rewards patience. The problem is, I am not a patient man, nor do I think that the reward here would be commensurate with the effort. Thus, I spent enough time, which was quite a bit, to grasp maybe half of this book. I think the rest escaped me. That’s partially my fault—but it’s also the author’s fault, since an elliptical writing style combined with frequent use of untranslated French phrases (even the educated don’t generally learn French anymore), along with scatterings of Greek, does not conduce to good communication. And aside from foreign languages, Arendt’s thought sometimes is so obscure as to be ethereal, an odd trait in a book that (in this edition) features a clenched fist on the cover, which is really not truth in advertising.
  
  Arendt’s project is, more or less, to criticize the French Revolution relative to the American Revolution, as well as compare and contrast the two, and then to recommend some changes in the modern American system—namely, more popular participation, in the form of what she calls “councils,” but I suppose “soviets” might be a more evocative term. That’s not really fair, though, because of the freight of the term “soviets”—what Arendt wants is more like subsidiarity, or a subsidiarity where local, organically arising institutions form a guiding framework for all government, from the bottom up. She does not see councils as advisory, though; she wants them to be the main force in politics, replacing party politics. Before she gets there, however, Arendt goes through her views on modern revolution in considerable detail.
  
  The reader is displeased to find that the Introduction in this 2006 edition is written by the late Jonathan Schell, notably mainly for decades of being a propagandist for demanding we allow Communist domination of the world in order to avoid nuclear war, the living embodiment of “better Red than dead.” He wrote the agitprop book "The Fate of the Earth," which Michael Kinsley called “the silliest book ever taken seriously by serious people.” And Schell is an odd choice, given that early in the book Arendt explicitly ridicules such weak men as “not serious,” proposing a “preposterous alternative” and believing “slavery will not be so bad.” But his Introduction is really pretty good, discussing the wave of revolutions that took place after Arendt wrote this book. His focus, though, is on the “nice” revolutions that took place in the developed or half-developed world, such as in Portugal, Poland (and against Communism generally), South Korea, and so on. He ignores the nasty and pointless revolutions that have occupied much of the Third World in post-colonial times, probably because no intellectual thought underlies those revolutions, and they’re not really worth talking about analytically.
  
  All of "On Revolution" is very difficult reading, because while everything Arendt says makes sense, it is very poorly structured in service of any overall argument. The reader can tease out lines of thought, to some degree, with great effort. To do so in detail and structurally accurately would probably require, I think, three sequential close readings of the entire work, which I’m not going to do. What flows naturally from a single reading of the book is more of a stream of consciousness, tied to what Arendt thinks of a wide range of topics related to revolution, some distantly, some closely. For example, she offers an exegesis of Melville’s "Billy Budd" and its relationship to good versus compassion, and to absolute ends versus constrained ends. Dostoevsky shows up, as do Cain and Abel. Then Rousseau and Robespierre are linked in, to (I think) claim that the focus changed during the course of the French Revolution, no longer liberation from tyranny, but rather liberation from “necessity,” i.e., from poverty, and this was a wrong turn. If I sat down and pondered those pages for a good few hours, my guess is that it would reveal wisdom to me. But I don’t want to invest the time, so it is fairly unsatisfying.
  
  The overriding theme of the book is participation in the political life as the touchstone of the life worth living. Arendt begins with the ancient Greek focus on such life, the life of free men taking part in making decisions in the public sphere, which was for the Greeks the point of life. A private life, or the life of a man not free (either directly unfree, like a slave, or without independent means), was far inferior to such public life, which brought happiness, “public happiness.” For Arendt, this is the “actual content of freedom,” not other civil rights, which are “essentially negative: they are the results of liberation.” Arendt claims that such public freedom is not possible under a monarchy or other non-republican form of non-tyrannical government (though she is wrong), and even though civil rights are possible under non-republican government, that is not enough. She therefore defines a revolution as the novelty, new since Rome, of re-discovering the critical importance of public freedom so defined. Violence is not the key; that is incidental. The goal of participating in the political life where one had not done so before is what characterizes a revolution, which means the original meaning, of a restoration, a “revolving back,” (the meaning, in fact, that Thomas Paine ascribed to revolution) is not applicable, and the Glorious Revolution, for example, was not a revolution at all in Arendt’s sense.
  
  A necessary consequence of this line of thought is that Arendt denigrates civil society outside the sphere of political participation. This excludes the possibility that non-political, or less political, “civil society,” can serve under tyranny both as a refuge from totalitarian politics and the wellspring of possible resistance to tyranny, Havel’s “power of the powerless.” Such an option does not seem to have occurred to Arendt, and given that was the ultimate force eroding Communism (combined with Ronald Reagan’s iron intransigence in the face of quislings like Schell), it seems like a significant failure of vision.
  
  As between the two revolutions on which she focuses, Arendt’s core claim is that the French Revolution tried to alleviate material poverty and the American Revolution tried to alleviate poverty of public happiness; only the latter was successful, or could be. The French Revolution lost its purpose, and its way, when it attempted “the transformation of the Rights of Man into the rights of Sans-Culottes.” (Failure to appreciate this doomed the Russian Revolution as well, she says.) Arendt doesn’t think that poverty is good, but rather that only focusing on relieving poverty is inadequate, because that’s not all that people need, nor is it even what they want. As she says, “The hidden wish of poor men is not ‘To each according to his needs,’ but ‘To each according to his desires.’ ” By the same token, it is not failure to deliver “wealth and economic well-being” that makes Communism bad, but its tyranny, through its suppression of true freedom. The Americans avoided the pitfall of excessive focus on material improvement, because poverty was far less common; or, viewed another way, the political life, true freedom, was closer and more reachable for Americans, and it was also, or therefore, the goal on which the Founders focused.
  
  The book is basically an expansion on these topics, with very many branching thoughts. When discussing America, Arendt surveys various commentary on the America contemporary with the Revolution, all of which is interesting, but she clearly is a huge admirer of John Adams, who appears very the most of any thinker, both for his historical and his political thought. Thomas Jefferson does too, but mostly for his thoughts on council-type government, with which Arendt concludes the book. Arendt basically thought that the most desirable form of government was one in which the people exercised their true freedom by participating in local government and, through such local bodies, constituted and directed the actions of higher bodies. She points to the supposedly spontaneous formation of such bodies during the Hungarian Revolution as evidence of this as a coming thing, “concerned with the reorganization of the political and economic life of the country and the establishment of a new order.” Maybe, but more likely such formation was just evidence of the destruction of civil society by the Communists, and the councils were an attempt to re-form civil society at speed, not to “establish a new order,” and the councils would have, over time, if the Hungarian Revolution had been successful, quickly morphed back into more traditional political structures and class structures. (Arendt hates party politics; like the American Founders, she thinks such politics are pernicious and a bastardization of true freedom. She is also very clear that she is not suggesting that the councils should be soviets, taking over factory management and so forth—she grasps very clearly that workers are incompetent to be managers.) Not to mention that the Hungarian Revolution was the only armed attempt to revolt against Communist tyranny, which was not a coincidence—the Hungarians have, for a very long time, gone in for doomed armed struggle (as I know, being half-Hungarian). It is both their glory and their curse, but I don’t think what the Hungarians do in any given instance can or should be generalized. There were no councils in other countries under Communist domination, because there were no revolutions there—but there was embryonic civil society of the type Havel outlined, striving toward the same ends.
  
  Still, Arendt spends quite a bit of time making broad claims for the council system, which she claims often “sprang up as the spontaneous organs of the people, not only outside all revolutionary parties but entirely unexpected by them and their leaders.” (She does not seem to realize that the Paris communes, for example, were not expressions of the popular will, but dominated by unemployed professional troublemakers of vicious character, hardly interested in “a new public space for freedom.”) She claims Jefferson endorsed this system, although she admits that his only mention of it was a few oblique references in letters he wrote at the very end of his life, to a “ward system.” From fifty years on, though, we can see that council systems have caught on nowhere, which either means that the Man is always keeping the people down, or that in real life councils are not a viable form of government beyond the small-scale local.
  
  At the end, I can’t really recommend this book. Not because it’s bad, as such, but because of opportunity cost. It doesn’t add much to the reader’s thought, or at least this reader’s thought, and having to dig out a coherent line of analysis with a pickaxe fails the basic test of cost and benefit.
• 
  Shazz Shah

  بالاخره این کتابه تموم شد. واقعا حس میکردم قرار نیست تموم شه هیچوقت. کتاب جالبی بود ولی خب واسه من که اولین بار بود در زمینه سیاست کتاب میخوندم یه مقدار سخت بود.
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  Leonardo

  Hannah Arendt celebró sin reservas a la democracia Americana como el propio lugar de invención de la política moderna. La idea central de la Revolución Americana, sostuvo, es el establecimiento de la libertad, o, en verdad, la fundación de un cuerpo político que garantice el espacio donde pueda operar la libertad. Arendt acentuó el establecimiento de esta democracia en la sociedad, es decir, la fijeza de sus cimientos y la estabilidad de su funcionamiento. La revolución tiene éxito, según ella, en la medida que le pone fin a la dinámica de los poderes constituyentes y establece un poder constituido estable.
  
  
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  Hannah Arendt proclamó que la Revolución Americana era superior a la Francesa porque era una búsqueda ilimitada de libertad política, mientras que la Francesa era una lucha limitada sobre la escasez y la desigualdad, no sólo celebró un ideal de libertad que los europeos desconocían desde mucho tiempo atrás, sino que también lo reterritorializó en los Estados Unidos.
  
  
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