Back to Basics

In light of the Occupy Wall Street protests the word “revolution” is being bandied about all over the press.  We might, however, pause and ask if we have lost a sense of its true significance.  Read “The Meaning of Revolution", the first chapter of Hannah Arendt’s stellar On Revolution to grasp what is really at play on Wall Street, as well as what is at stake.  “Crucial,” Arendt writes, “to any understanding of revolutions in the modern age is that the idea of freedom and the experience of a beginning should coincide.”  Revisiting Arendt’s classic promises to thoughtfully stoke discussion about our current political climate.

Then read “The Power and Paradox of Revolutions” in which Seyla Benhabib provides an important critique of the revolutionary movements in the Arab world.  We invite readers to also consider these reflections with reference to Occupy Wall Street and the shift underway in the United States.  Benhabib, thinking with Arendt writes, “revolutionary power that destroys the old order must do so in the name of another, higher kind of authority. But where does this authority derive from?”  While the OWS protesters seek to abolish what they deem a withered way of governance their aim is to bring about what they consider a sounder political process.   What is the legitimizing force in the revolutionary movement underway  today in this country?