Edmund Burke and Hannah Arendt: Decolonization, Resentment, and the Social Question

Abstract

Hannah Arendt's work On Revolution brings into contact two temporalities: the decade of its composition (the 1960s), alongside its understanding of revolution in conjunction with “Enlightenment.” A reader of Edmund Burke who turns to this work will be startled at the degree to which he plays a central role. His ideas and even his temperament seem to guide her profound praise for “the men who made the American Revolution” alongside her shock centered around Robespierre but mingled with her discussion of Rousseau and the French Revolution. This connection between Burke and Arendt is worth tracing because it allows readers to understand her response to the post-WWII age, which witnessed the emergence of manifold diverse “revolutions” in the social and political realm brought by decolonization, both in the European and non-European (i.e., Asian, African, postcolonial) contexts. It also allows readers to question Arendt's view of the role that suffering and poverty ought to play in moments of revolution and to scrutinize her thesis that wherever a solution to the “social” question was sought by “political” means it has led to terror and violence, with the notion of resentment playing a crucial role.