Introduction
Hannah Arendt ( 1906-1975 ), a German-born , American political theorist , understood power in a radically different way from the traditional view within political philosophy that holds that power can only be understood as the power expressed over someone else . In this traditional formulation , power appears as ‘ power over ’ others and is therefore synonymous with the domination of other people . For Arendt , this view not only deeply misunderstands the reality of power itself but also misunderstands how power can be utilised . Instead , Arendt offers a formulation where power appears as something that is shared with others and is built collaboratively as opposed to being established through domination . On this view , power can only be understood as ‘ power with ’ other people . In the first section of this paper , I will give a brief account of the understanding of power as ‘ power over ’, and where this traditional view comes from , so that we have a firm grasp of the formulation that Arendt ’ s work challenges . I will then turn to Arendt ’ s radical departure from this tradition by outlining the ways in which she reformulates our understanding of power into a conception of power as something that is equally shared and horizontally built with other people . This will lead to a discussion of the way in which Arendt grounds this reconceptualisation of power in language and our shared capacities for communication and conversation with one another in public spaces . Lastly , I will briefly discuss Jürgen Habermas ’ misreading of Arendt ’ s work in order to highlight how Arendt ’ s work can avoid the need for unanimous agreement within these public spaces by allowing for disagreements and democratic debate to occur in the first place .
The general understanding of power that Arendt is attempting to overcome is one characterised by an understanding of power as ‘ power over ’ others . This understanding of power takes it cue from the kinds of power we , as human beings , feel we exert over the world around us and is thus grounded in theories of the will that propose we have a certain agency , ‘ power ’ and control over the world . In essence , we tend to see political power in a similar vein to the way in which we view our own personal , bodily power . This leads us to an understanding of political power as ‘ power over ’, which is essentially an understanding of power that emphasises its dominative function , insofar as it stands to reason that we would have the same ability to express our will in the political arena as we seem to have in our everyday lives . This view of ‘ power over ’ is thus entrenched in the way we think about power itself and so , as Frazer correctly notes , whether power is understood in terms of individual agency or , conversely , in the rather grander