Hannah Arendt and Bearing with Strangers

Abstract

This paper examines Hannah Arendt's claim from ‘Understanding and Politics’ that we need to determine what ‘makes it bearable for us to live with other people, strangers forever, in the same world and makes it possible for them to bear with us’. From the vantage point of bearing with strangers, it analyses in detail two of Arendt's essays not often treated extensively: ‘Reflections on Little Rock’ and ‘On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing’. Some implications of Arendt's position for current debates about the construction of otherness are identified and assessed. It is argued that bearing with strangers offers unique insights into questions of personal identity and the nature of appropriate political and social bonds. Ultimately, the paper suggests that the idea of bearing with strangers puts Arendt's political thought and her key concepts in a new light and offers elements of a distinctively Arendtian account of politics.