Hannah Arendt

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How does Arendt's concept of political freedom as a "miracle", an interruption of the expected, address the issues of freedom and authority she raises in "What Is Authority?"

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Hannah Arendt's concept of political freedom as a "miracle" addresses the issues of freedom and authority by highlighting freedom's ability to interrupt expected norms. In "What Is Authority?", she argues that true authority involves a freely chosen obedience, which no longer exists in modern times. This freedom, akin to a miracle, allows for unexpected actions that can transform political processes and prevent societal decline, emphasizing the need for deliberate action to initiate change.

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Hannah Arendt points out that a miracle in the commonly understood supernatural sense is an interruption of the order of nature. A man walking on water or a virgin giving birth to a child are miraculous events because they are free from the natural order. The exercise of freedom is analogous to this, because a person who always acts exactly as you would expect them to act does not appear to be acting freely.

However, Arendt regards authority as a combination of obedience and freedom. In her essay "What Is Authority?" she expresses the view that authority does not exist in the modern era, because free people no longer accept it of their own accord. People are either coerced into obeying power or they do as they like, and authority means neither of these things.

This is a subtle point: acceptance of authority means making a free choice to obey....

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For instance, you might make a free decision to join a church and to obey all its rules, even the ones you do not particularly like. Freedom means doing what you have chosen to do, rather than simply doing whatever you want. Freely choosing to do something you do not want to do because you accept the authority that tells you to do it would itself be an unexpected act in the modern age.

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How does Arendt's concept of freedom as a "miracle" address issues of freedom and authority in the political sphere?

In "What Is Freedom?" Hannah Arendt connects freedom closely with politics and miracles. Let's look at some of what she says to get you started on constructing your answer to this question.

Arendt says that "action and politics ... are the only things of which we could not even conceive without at least assuming that freedom exists." Politics exist because of freedom and are manifested through action.

Arendt connects both of these concepts with the idea of miracles, which she defines as "something which could not be expected" and as an interruption "of some natural series of events" or some "automatic process." Politics are generally about processes, historical and often automatic, that are begun by human beings but can be, and often should be, interrupted by the deliberate actions of people. Arendt notes that political processes can turn destructive and that civilizations can thereby decline if people do not exercise their freedom through action and interrupt these processes in a kind of "miracle," an unexpected way. They can initiate a "new beginning" that is exactly what may be needed at the moment to take society in a new direction and help shape reality.

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