Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Forgiving and promising are the only moral precepts that are not applied to action from the outside.”
Hannah Arendt · Political philosophy · Modern · 1958
What does it mean?
Forgiving and promising, in the action chapter, are the moral resources that grow inside action rather than being stuck on from outside. Action is irreversible, so we need forgiveness if we are not to be stuck with the first deed. It is unpredictable, so we need promises if a future is to have islands of stability. A rival reading hears a complete moral theory, or a claim that punishment and justice are outsiders and therefore illegitimate. She is naming two faculties politics cannot borrow from a commandment and then forget.
Did Hannah Arendt really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A compression of her English. In the action chapter she argues that forgiving answers the irreversibility of action and promising answers its unpredictability, and that these faculties arise from action itself rather than being imported from a moral system outside politics. The card shortens that claim. She wrote in English. The badge marks the compression.
Where it comes from
The Human Condition, the chapter on action
Approximate date: 1958.
How to use it
A neighbourhood dispute in Sheffield is irreversible in the small sense that the thing was said, and unpredictable in that nobody knows who these people will be next year. A promise about the hedge, and a release from the first insult, are the sorts of acts she thinks action itself requires. They do not replace a legal remedy if there is one. They are what the legal remedy cannot supply, a future between the people.
A mindset reading
Do not cite a section number you do not have. The chapter on action is the source. Irreversibility and unpredictability are the two predicaments. If your summary has only forgiveness, you have lost half the argument, the half about promises, which is how she thinks power and public identity survive time.
Understand the philosophy
The Human Condition's action chapter, 1958. Her English, compressed here and marked. Jesus is in the background of the forgiveness pages, and she is explicit about that. The political use she makes of it is still hers.
- ethics
- freedom
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
Forgiving and promising, in the action chapter, are the moral resources that grow inside action rather than being stuck on from outside. Action is irreversible, so we need forgiveness if we are not to be stuck with the first deed. It is unpredictable, so we need promises if a future is to have islands of stability. A rival reading hears a complete moral theory, or a claim that punishment and justice are outsiders and therefore illegitimate. She is naming two faculties politics cannot borrow from a commandment and then forget.
Did Hannah Arendt really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A compression of her English. In the action chapter she argues that forgiving answers the irreversibility of action and promising answers its unpredictability, and that these faculties arise from action itself rather than being imported from a moral system outside politics. The card shortens that claim. She wrote in English. The badge marks the compression.
Which work is it in?
The Human Condition, the chapter on action Approximate date: 1958.