Contours of Dread

Abstract

AbstractHannah Arendt’s and Isaiah Berlin’s incomprehension of one another resulted in one of the great missed dialogues in political theory. Arendt’s civic-democratic values find freedom in participation on a par with others in the political realm. Berlin’s liberal-democratic commitments define freedom as the space where individuals are unconstrained by the state or others. Modern democracy introduces the social-democratic commitment to the state’s ability to reduce inequality and provide for the public good. The strife, varyingly creative or destructive, among the liberal-, civic-, and social-democratic dimensions animates modern democracies. Kai Hiruta provides a comprehensive account of the Arendt–Berlin relation. Adriana Cavarero draws on Arendt’s conception of political participation to illuminate contemporary protests against injustice and racism in Western countries. Dilip Gaonkar examines, with emphasis on India’s democracy, the role of direct action, including riots, as forms of political participation by the demos. Charles Taylor and Craig Calhoun, in their account of democratic “degeneration” in the US and Europe in light of globalization and populist and autocratic trends, postulate the social-democratic as the telos of democracy itself, diminishing the liberal- and civic-democratic and overlooking democracy’s ineluctable strife. By contrast, there is no telos in Arendt’s thought, which values beginnings and innovations.