This week I'd kind of like to do a throwback post to last week and talk about some good and bad passages from Arendt. I feel like we missed a lot of confusing and brilliant quotes after our discussion about power, force, and strength.
A passage I thought was really great and that we missed in class is on page 201. "If power were more than this potentiality in being together, if it could be possessed like strength or applied like force instead of being dependent upon the unreliable and only temporary agreement of many wills and intentions, omnipotence would be a concrete human possibility." I felt like a lot of people were still grappling with the idea of force after our discussion (myself among them), and I just really liked how Arendt touched on force being applied rather than being just a potentiality like power.
My choice for a really bad passage would have to be on page 202. Arendt says, "Under the conditions of human life , the only alternative to power is not strength, which is helpless against power, but force, which indeed one man alone can exert against his fellow men and of which one or a few can possess a monopoly by acquiring the means to violence." I dislike this quote for a few reasons. Like we talked about in class this is the first time Arendt brings up a relationship between violence and force. After this passage they become almost interchangeable where I feel like they are two different things. She also says that power is very independent of material factors such as numbers or means. Yet she then seemingly contradicts herself by saying power can be broken up by tyranny, and by extension isolation.
A few further thoughts about these three concepts. First I felt like many people touched upon this in class, but it seems to me that strength and power have the same limitations. Both of them are limited by numbers. Power is limited by the number of people you have in a real world scenario, and strength seems to matter less and less the more people there are. Secondly (this occurred to me after class), does anyone else think that in some cases strength and force are ways to gather power? We touched upon how stronger people might be able to gather more power up to a certain point (see limitation of strength above) but I don't think that anyone mentioned how it seems like in corrupt societies/governments/groups force can be equally as potent as strength for gathering power. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?
I think that power is limited by people, and plurality as well. The limitations are not only that you need other people but the plurality of humanity also. I also was of the understanding that strength was very individual-not limited by numbers. Why do you think strength seems to matter less with more people? Interesting! I also agree that there is some formula of strength+force=power but Arendt might not. Because her views of power are so idealistic I believe that she would say if there was force involved it wouldnt be true power.
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