#46 / The Promise Of Politics

 

 

I recently had an occasion to open up The Promise of Politics, and to read it again. It is a collection of six essays and an epilogue by Hanna Arendt. I have found this book to be a good antidote to that "Married To The Mob" feeling. If our politics is oppressive, and generates in us a feeling of despair, and a conviction that we can never escape the horrible conditions in which we are enmeshed, we do need to remember the point to which Arendt continually returns: the political world we inhabit is a world among and between us. What is always most salient in that world of politics is its promise: the promise that we have always the ability to transform our world, and to make it anew.