Hannah Arendt and the Ordinance of Time
This chapter discusses the theoretical ideas of Hannah Arendt. The corruptibility of politics was a constant theme in Arendt's thought and it served as the basis for a vision of politics that was radical and critical. Her radicalism had nothing to do with current ideologies. It was instead the classic radicalism that can be found in any of the great political theorists from Plato to Marx. The distinctive mark of the radicalism of the theoros is the claim that what most men most of the time take to be politics is not politics at all. The radical thrust of her claim lay in its denial that problems of distributive justice or socioeconomic equality are the main objects of political action, the essential stuff of politics, or the test of the quality of political institutions and political leaders.