On Hannah Arendt’s Constitutional Thought

Hannah Arendt is a unique thinker in Western political history,and it seems to be difficult to classify her into any school of thoughts.She advocates action against the meditation tradition of Western traditional philosophy,but she considers herself to be a believer in Aristotle.She advocates reviving republicanism in the 20 th century,but criticizing the dangers of modernity.She fiercely criticizes the modern constitutional system,but advocates a council system with deliberative democratic characteristics.Many seemingly contradictory ideas have been perfectly integrated in her ideas.She values independent thinking and judgment,and doesn’t label herself with any thought genres.As one of the most original political philosophers of the 20 th century,she developed philosophy of Heidegger and Jaspers.Hannah Arendt has proposed many subversive views,such as new republicanism,public sphere theory,action doctrine,totalitarianism,"the banality of evil",civil disobedience,and etc.Among them,the most controversial idea is the council system with the characteristics of deliberative democracy proposed in the book "On Revolution".In "On Revolution",Arendt compares the causes,processes,results and historical significance of the French Revolution and the American Revolution,and believes the purpose of the revolution is to create public freedom.But she pointed out that the hardships of the people before French Revolution,makes the revolution deviated,became pursuit for materials,which should have been aimed at pursuing politicalfreedom.After revolution,the individual rights of citizens are still restricted,and the revolutionary’s goal of pursuing political freedom has not been reached.This is consistent with Tocqueville’s assertion in L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution,which Tocqueville believed although French Revolution overthrew the rule of Bourbon dynasty,the old system was not destroyed.Arendt believes that the process of American Revolution which has always been centered around the goal of building freedom,as a result,it has indeed established a country where citizens enjoy full political rights.However,Arendt’s thinking did not stop here.She believes that revolution and constitutionalism are two stages of the general revolution.Only when the constitution is finally made,the revolutionary is completed.After studying the constitutional history of American Revolution,Arendt believes that the formulation and practice of the US Constitution allow the Constitution amended in the form of amendments which reflect the constitutional spirit of constructing and expanding public sphere,and grant this freedom to institutionalization and constitutional procedural safeguards.Arendt believes that advocating constitutional construction,establishing a good constitutional order and protecting the constitutional process are just one aspect of guaranteeing freedom.More importantly,the other is that how to train citizens’ ability to participate in politics.She believes that the US Constitution ignores the training and spiritual promotion of citizens’ ability to participate in politics,leading people to gradually move away from politics.She calls it "revolutionary tradition and lost treasure".Fundamentally,Arendt believes that party politics and representative democracy make people gradually move away from political life after electing their own representatives,who will replace themselves in political life.In order to enable people to participate in political life on a regular basis and continue to receive political training in it,Arendt proposed to establish a republic on the basis of council system,instead of the party politics and the representative democracy.The council system is the realization form of Arendt’s republicanism.She wants to establish an ideal country which "all people participate politics".the advocates believe this idea provides a model substitute for politics,while the opponents believethat the idea is too idealistic,even considered to be a Utopia.The idea of the council system embodies Arendt’s unique constitutional idea,which distinguishes between "authority" and "power".She believes that the purpose of the revolution is to establish a world with political freedom.The constitution is to guarantee this freedom.In this sense,constitutional power is only an authority,not a power.She believes that the guarantee of freedom is not the essence of the constitution.While the constitution should create a kind of freedom that the people can organize themselves politically and establish a new power system,namely the council system.The council system embodies the idea that power belongs to the people,not any party.It is advocated to select the members of the upper-level council from the most basic council and so on until the members of the council at the national level produced.The subordinate council are mutually negotiated rather than the leadership.Arendt’s idea of the council system is an integral part of his political theory system.She believes in Aristotle’s "people are political animals",and her political theory system revolves around "people" and "politics." She puts forward the "public sphere" doctrine,and the political field is belonging to the public sphere.She opposes the idea thinking and despising action which were the tradition of Western philosophy,and strongly advocates action.Public sphere theory and action doctrine,that is,to encourage citizens to participate in politics with positive actions,instead of meditation,or away from the public sphere and alienating politics.The right to participate in politics is inseparable from the constitutional guarantee.In the constitutional power,Arendt advocates the distinction between constitutional "authority" and constitutional "power" in order to break the "vicious circle of Siyes".She overcame the totalitarian politics brought about by the crisis of modernity,endowed the characteristics of the classical republican era,and tried to revive classical republicanism in the 20 th century.Her solution was to establish a republic based on council system.She believes that the council system not only overcomes the tendency of the people alienating politics under the representative system and party politics,but also enables the people to be often trained in politics in their daily lives and participate directly in political activities with their own actions.The emergence of the thinking—council system,which was influenced by historical events,was inspired by political thinkers represented by Montesquieu and Thomas Jefferson,especially Thomas Jefferson’s "elementary republic" theory.The public sphere theory,the action doctrine,the constitutional power point of distinguishing between "authority" and "power",and the classical republicanism thought together constitute Arendt’s council system idea.Besides introduction and conclusion,this dissertation is divided to six chapters.The introductory part explains the significance of the topic,research methods,journals review,paper’s structure and deficiencies.The first chapter mainly introduces Hannah Arendt’s life,thoughts and academic achievements.The formation of her philosophical thoughts is inseparable from the special experience of her life.I have reviewed Arendt’s important works.The second chapter expounds Arendt’s historical philosophy,political and legal idea.Arendt’s historical philosophy inherits ancient Greek historical philosophy and has development,mainly embodied in the aspects of "history continuity " and "immortal history view".Arendt’s political idea is direct from Aristotle and based on theories of freedom,action and public sphere,promotes participation of political action and opposing vita contemplativa.Unlike other scholars’ understanding of the law,Arendt views law as a relationship between people.She believes law is not a compulsory-subordinate relationship,but relies on the unanimous consent of all citizens.From politics to law,makes her idea of law unique.The third chapter is "vita activa: Public Sphere and Action." Arendt’s most original theory is the public sphere theory and action doctrine.She opposes the tradition of Western philosophy which valuing thinking and despising action,and strongly advocates action.She believes public sphere is essential to politics.In the public sphere,people show their excellence through speech and action in order to convince others.But Arendt believes thinking solo and no action does not help the achievement of a democratic consensus.Thus,she proposed that people should " vita activa" rather than "vita contemplativa".Arendt’s public sphere theory is based on the plurality of human beings.It is plural people who are likely to establish a space formutual communication.At the same time,it has the characteristics of replacing violence and coercion with words and actions,and replacing truth and eternity with opinions.This idea must protect by a system-the constitution.The fourth chapter discussed Arendt’s constitutional theory.Constitution is the fundamental law of a country,and the constitutional right is the most fundamental power to a country.The subject of constitutional right answers the question of where the legitimacy of the modern constitution comes from.There is a problem of the so-called "vicious circle of Siyes" : as a constitutional right,the granting of power must go through certain legal procedures.And before the Constitution has been established,no other law exist yet.How can the constitutional authority be justified in the absence of law? In addition to the legitimacy of the subject of constitutional right,there is another paradox.The constitution must be recognized through certain democratic procedures and how this democratic procedure is recognized by? The vicious circle of such legislation eventually led to the constant search for a "high-level law" that was higher than the constitutional law.In fact,this "higher law" did not exist.In order to solve this "vicious circle",Jean-Jacques Rousseau,Montesquieu,John Locke,Emmanuel Abbe Si-eyes and Carl Schmitt proposed their own solution each.Arendt believes their theory are based on people’s sovereignty.They set up a new "God" after broking the creationism.In order to solve this paradox,she proposed the theory of constitutional rights based on the distinction between authority and power.Her theory of constitutional rights is based on the distinction between authority and power.She believes that the legitimacy of constitutional rights comes from the authority formed by history,and constitutional right is not a power.She also believes that constitutionalism is a continuous process in which authority does not disappear.If the constitutional right is regarded as a kind of power,the constitutional power exists only at the time of formulating the constitution.Once the constitution is enacted,the constitutional power will disappear.Arendt tried to break the so-called "Si-eyes’ paradox" by distinguishing between authority and power.The fifth chapter is entitled "Contemporary Interpreters of Classical Republicanism",which mainly expounds Arendt’s republicanism ideas.Herrepublicanism idea was deeply influenced by the ancient Greek city-state politics and Aristotle’s republicanism,and based on criticizing liberal constitutionalism and republicanism constitutionalism.In Arendt’s opinion,fundamental contradiction between these two constitutional ideas is that they cannot handle the contradiction between the enthusiasm of citizens to participate political life and the expression of opinions.The solution proposed by her is to closely integrate the freedom and happiness of the people with the sharing of public power.On this basis,she put forward the idea of the "council system",which directly reflects the essence of Arendt’s republicanism.Her republicanism idea is organized by liberty,revolution,systematic design.The sixth chapter "E pluribus unum-Council System" is the key chapter of this dissertation."E pluribus unum" means Arendt believes that plural people,not individual people,make up the world.In the public sphere,people exchange views,express opinions and persuade others in words.This idea is inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s "elementary republic" theory,Tocqueville’s idea of local autonomy,Harrington’s "overlapping republic" theory,and the impact of these theories on the council system.The council system is essentially a small public sphere and a political form that is not based on sovereignty.The idea of a council system is essentially a question of how a public sphere and a democratic consensus can be achieved.This chapter explores this issue and the shortcomings of the council system.The conclusion is the summary of the full dissertation.In my opinion,the council system is the systematic design of her republicanism.Weather this idea is an Utopia or not shouldn’t in our focusing,we ought to realize the original intention of Arendt is to offer an other democratic plan,in order to encourage people involve themselves to politics by action.