IH 0852 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Political Freedom, Self-Ownership

• School: Temple University
• Department: Intellectual Heritage
• Course: IH 0852
• Professor: Andrew Mossin

Document Summary

Political freedom: by freedom arendt does not mean the ability to choose among a set of possible alternatives. For instance she would not equate freedom with having the choice between two political parties. Nor is arendt talking about the concept of free will that, according to christian teaching, was given to us by god. Arendt means the capacity to begin, to start something new, to do the unexpected, with which all human beings are endowed by virtue of being born. Thus, for arendt, the thing that differentiates political freedom from other forms of freedom is that it must involve action of some kind in the world by those exercising that freedom. Inner freedom: arendt defines this as the inward space into which men [and women] may escape from [their external circumstances] and feel free as a result (440). This is not the same thing as saying that inner freedom is one"s own thoughts or feelings; rather,