ABSTRACT
Hannah Arendt, on the contrary, understands power as the ability to agree upon a common course of action in unconstrained communication. Arendt reserves for it the term “force”. Arendt starts from another model of action, the communicative: Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but in act in concert. Arendt disconnects the concept of power from the teleological model; power is built up in communicative action; it is a collective effect of speech in which reaching agreement is an end in itself for all those involved. Arendt regards the development of power as an end in itself. Arendt’s principal philosophical work, The Human Condition, serves to systematically renew the Aristotelian concept of praxis. For Arendt too strategic action is essentially unpolitical, a matter for experts. The example of warfare is of course suited to demonstrating the contrast between political power and force.
