ISSN: 2151-0806
right to refuse, a states right to decide who is a guest, an enemy or stranger and the Importance of founding this right to have rights, this right to belong not on state sovereignty but on intersubjective relationality, on a community of difference that arises from sharing a space and creating a world together. While Kant appreciates the importance of horizontal relations in the effort towards peace, he fails to realize the friction between the horizontal and the vertical. It is precisely in Arendt’s courage to challenge the vertical politics of peace that she develops a relational peace that is not only free from the violence of war, but also free from ‘power politics’ that prevent real peace. Conclusions Hannah Arendt once said ‘You know the left think that I am conservative, and the conservatives think I am left or I am a maverick or God knows what. And I must say that I couldn’t care less. I don’t think the real questions of this century get any kind of illumination by this kind of thing.’ It is precisely such an idiosyncratic response that defines Hannah Arendt’s view on peace. She had no interested for such politics, rather she dedicated her life to the search for the political in the name of real peace. She recognised that a sincere interest in peace called for a reflection that went beyond the violent and speechless confines of war. It is this latter realisation that brought Arendt to develop a notion of the political rooted in power and plurality. Without her unique approach to the political as a space of empowerment by means of words and deeds, Clausewitz’s adage rings true. Any peace defined by politics, defined by those who desire to maintain their ‘power’, any peace that is based on exclusion – such as that of the state – cannot ever be anything other than a precursor to war. What Arendt has clearly demonstrated is that real peace must be fundamentally rooted in power, relationality and plurality. What is now essential is that humanity realise that politics is a far cry from the political and that only together, in the between, can we begin to change this.
References Arendt, Hannah. Crises of the Republic; Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience on Violence, Thoughts on Politics, and Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972. ---. The Human Condition. Charles R. Walgreen Foundation Lectures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. ---. The Jewish Writings. Eds. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. ---. “Peace or Armistice in the near East?” The Review of Politics, Vol. 12, no. 1 (Jan 1950): 5682. ---. On Revolution. London: Faber and Faber, 1963. ---. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Meridian Books, 1951. Butler, Judith. "‘I merely belong to them’." Review of The Jewish Writings, by Hannah Arendt, edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron Feldman. London Review of Books 29 no. 9 (2007): 26-28, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n09/judith-butler/i-merely-belong-to-them. Clausewitz, Carl von. On War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. Cranston, Maurice "Untitled." Encounter. March (1976). Peace Studies Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 3, July 2013
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