On Compassion: Hannah Arendt and the Political Virtues

This article examines Hannah Arendt’s persistent and unfashionable rejection of the usefulness of compassion in politics, a rejection that runs through her entire philosophical and political project. It relies on a close reading of On Revolution, paying particular attention to the fictional narratives she relied upon to make her case—Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor,” along with her later interpretation of Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed. Her controversial claim is that goodness and compassion in their purest forms are naturally subversive of the political realm, which must entertain a dialogue between various opinions. Compassion is impatient with mere talk and, she implies, will prefer instead the direct means of violence or coercion. Arendt’s overarching point is that those who love the good (and their own souls) may not care enough for the world proper. Her countervailing ideal is amor mundi, a concept buttressed by her reading of Machiavelli, and fleshed out in the example of Max Weber, who also displayed a preference for an “ethic of responsibility” for the world over an “ethic of absolute ends.”