Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.”
Hannah Arendt · Political philosophy · Modern · 1970
What does it mean?
Power and violence are opposites. Where one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Power is people acting together. Violence is instrumental, the means that can destroy power and cannot create it. A rival reading, ordinary realism, says this is a verbal trick: the powerful are precisely those with the guns, so the opposite is a fantasy. She thinks the fantasy is the other way around, the belief that a gun is a source of power rather than a sign that power has failed.
Did Hannah Arendt really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Arendt's English in On Violence. This is not the same claim as the definition of power as acting in concert, already in the library, though it depends on that definition. Power and violence are opposites in her typology, not two amounts of the same stuff.
Where it comes from
On Violence
Approximate date: 1970.
How to use it
A government, or a gang, or a management in a dispute in the Midlands, is called powerful because it can hurt. She would call that violence, and she would look for power in whether anyone is still acting with it rather than obeying it. The distinction changes what you count. It does not, by itself, say what a union or a state may do on Tuesday. It says you will misdescribe Tuesday if you have only one word.
A mindset reading
The companion sentence in this library is the positive definition of power. This one is the contrast. Quote either alone and you can make her say that joint action is everything, or that she only cared about a clever opposition. She cared about the typology because the words had started to mean their opposites.
Understand the philosophy
On Violence, 1970, argues with the New Left's flirtation with violence and with older glorifications of it. The Human Condition is the background. The sentence is a conclusion of the typology, not a proverb about peace.
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FAQ
What does it mean?
Power and violence are opposites. Where one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Power is people acting together. Violence is instrumental, the means that can destroy power and cannot create it. A rival reading, ordinary realism, says this is a verbal trick: the powerful are precisely those with the guns, so the opposite is a fantasy. She thinks the fantasy is the other way around, the belief that a gun is a source of power rather than a sign that power has failed.
Did Hannah Arendt really say this?
Well attested. Arendt's English in On Violence. This is not the same claim as the definition of power as acting in concert, already in the library, though it depends on that definition. Power and violence are opposites in her typology, not two amounts of the same stuff.
Which work is it in?
On Violence Approximate date: 1970.