Arendt and Aristotle on Equality, Leisure, and Solidarity

Abstract

According to the picture of ancient Greece painted by Aristotle and Hannah Arendt, democracies were based on a model of a sort of exclusionary equality: equality was achieved in the public sphere, but it was achieved by excluding those who were unequal by whatever criteria seemed important.I take it that such a project is no longer tenable. We have given up on projects of exclusionary equality to attempt to establish political systems based on notions of inclusionary equality, and we have taken up the attempt to include in public discussions as many as possible of those who have a justifiable claim to inclusion and for whom discussion is or can be made accessible.A danger over the course of this transition is a loss of the sense of what it is that binds individuals together in the political sphere. A citizen in an ancient Greek polis had a fairly good idea of what it was that brought him together with his fellow citizens: they were members of the same culture, they shared many common ends and they (often) shared an income bracket. Part of their pursuit of the good life required the presence and cooperation of those with whom they maintained political relations.Many proponents of inclusionary equality are suspicious about these sorts of criteria. In the absence of such commonalities, however, it becomes a matter of some urgency for the inclusionary egalitarian to find a ground for equality. Some have proposed various structures of rights to a share of socially produced wealth 1 or to participation in public discourse. 2 One primary advantage of a liberal, rights-based approach-that it makes no commitment to a "comprehensive conception" of a good life-is precisely the point of its failure for thinkers like Aristotle and Arendt. "If the state isn't promoting the good life," we might imagine them asking, "then what exactly is it doing?"The good life, for Aristotle and Arendt, has very little to do with the questions of minima and maximinima that dominate discussion today. Rather, they argue for a notion of interpersonal flourishing as opposed to mere social survival. I, in turn, want to underscore the centrality of leisure, and thus of the production of surplus, to this notion of flourishing. The difficulty with leisure, particularly when it is characterized in such sharp contrast to material survival, is the way in which it entails the production and distribution of surplus. Questions of who is to produce the surplus, when and for the benefit of whom lead back to questions of social class and the division of labor that often get left behind when the talk turns to rights and equality.

Justice, emotions, and solidarity

“…For the purposes of this article, it is of particular interest to notice what in Arendt's view triggers the formation of solidarity. Although her comments on solidarity and its formation are scarce, a brief yet poignant passage from On Revolution is especially relevant to this subject, to the extent that it generated a broad discussion among Arendtian scholars (Allen, 1999;Butler, 2010;Gaffney, 2017;Reshaur, 1992). In this passage, Arendt argues that solidarity among people stems from human suffering.…”

Occupation and basic income through the lens of Arendt’s vita activa

“…For a better understanding of the premises and conditions for work-related issues in general, and basic income in particular, Arendt's vita activa has been found to be a fruitful framework. In the context of basic income, Arendt has been discussed previously; for example, that not everyone is required to take part in the labor market in the future (Schroeder, 2001) and the significance of liberated time for taking part in the action modality (Butler, 2010). Suuronen (2018) has raised the spheres for human action, the private, the social, and the political/public in relation to basic income.…”

Solidarity in dark times: Arendt and Gadamer on the politics of appearance

“…97–118, Ken Reshaur, “Concepts of Solidarity in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 25.4 (), pp. 723–736, Samuel Butler, “Arendt and Aristotle on Equality, Leisure, and Solidarity,” Journal of Social Philosophy 41.4 (), pp. 470–490, Phillip Hansen, “Hannah Arendt and Bearing with Strangers,” Contemporary Political Theory 3 (), pp.…”