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The phenomenological naturę of Arendfs examination (and indeed defense) of political life can be traced through tlie profound influence exerted over her by botli Heidegger and Jaspers. Heidegger in particular can be seen to have profoundly impacted upon Arendfs tliouglit in forexample: in dieirshared suspicion of tlie 'metaphysical traditions' move toward abstract contemplation and away from immediate and worldly understanding and engagement, in their critique of modern calculative and instrumental attempts to order and dominate tlie world, in tlieir empliasis upon the ineliminable plurality and difference tliat characterize beings as worldly appearances, and so on. Tlńs is not. however, to gloss over tlie profound differences that Arendt had with Heidegger, with not only his political affiliation with tlie Nazis, or his moves later to philosopliical-poetic contemplation and his corresponding abdication from political engagement. Nevertlieless, it can justifiably be claimed that Arendt's inquiries foliowa cmcial impetus from Heideggers project in Being & Time.

Arendfs distinctive approach as a political thinker can be understood from tlie impems drawn from Heideggers phenomenology of Being'. She proceeds neither by an analysis of generał political concepts (sucli as authority, power. stale, sovereignty. etc.) traditionally associated with political philosophy, nor by an aggregative accumulabon of empirical data associated with political science'. Rather. beginning from a phenomenological prioritization of tlie 'factical' and experiential characterof human life. she adoptsa phenomenological mediod, thereby endeavoring to iuicover the fundamental structures of political experience. Eschewing tlie free-floating constnictions' and conceptual scliema imposed a posteriori upon experience by political philosophy, Arendt instead follows phenomenologys return 'to tlie tliings tliemselves' (zu den Sachen selbst), aiming by such investigation to make available tlie objective structures and characteristics of political being-in-the-world. asdistinct from other (morał, practical. artistic, productive, etc.) forms of life.

Hence Arendfs explication of tlie constitutive feanires of tlie vita activa in Tlie Human Condińon (labor, work, action) can be viewed as tlie phenomenological uncovering of the structures of human action qua existence and experience rather tlien abstract conceptual constructions or empirical generalizations about what people typically do. That is. tliey approximate with respect to the specihcity of the political field the 'existentials', the articulations of Daseiifs Being set out be Heidegger in Being and Time.

This phenomenological approach to tlie political partakes of a morę generał revaluation or reversal of tlie priority traditionally ascribed to philosopliical conceptuahzations over and above lived experience. That is, tlie world of common experience and interpretation (Lebenswelt) is taken to be primary and tlieoretical knowledge is dependent on that common experience in the form of a tliematization or extrapolation from what is primordially and pre-reflectively present in everyday experience. It follows, for Arendt, that political philosophy has a fundamentally ambiguous role in its relańon to political experience, insofar as its conceptual formulations do not simply articulate the structures of pre-reflective experience but can equally obscure them, becoming self-subsistent preconceptions which stand between philosopliical inquiry and tlie experiences in question, distorting tlie phenomenal core of experience by imposing upon it the lens of its own prejudices. Tlierefore. Arendt sees tlie conceptual core of traditional political philosophy as an impediment, because as it inserts presuppositions between tlie inquirer and the political phenomena in quesńoa Rather dian following Husserl s mediodological prescripdon of a bracketing' (epoche) of die prevalent philosopliical posnire, Arendfs follows Heideggefs historical Abbau or Destruktion to elear away the distorting enerustations of die philosopliical tradition, thereby aiming to uncover the originaiy characterof political experience which has for the most pan been occluded.

There is no simple way of presenting Arendfs diverse inquiries into the naturę and fate of the political, conceived as a distinctive modę of human experience and existence. Her corpus of writings present a rangę of arguments, and develop a rangę of conceptual distinctions. diat overlap from text to text, forming a web of inter-related excurses. Tlierefore, perhaps the only way to proceed is to present a summa don of her major works, in roughly chronological order, wliile neverdieless attempting to highlight the continuities that draw them together into a coherent whole.

3. On Totalitarianism

Arendfs first major work, published in 1951, is clearly a response to the devastating events of her own time - die rise of Nazi Germany and die catastrophic fate of European Jewry at its hands. die rise of Soviet Stalinism and its annihilation of millions of peasants (not to mention free-thinking intellecmal, writers, aitists, sciendsts and political activists). Arendt insisted diat diese manifestations of political evil could not be understood as mere extensions in scalę or scope of already exisdng precedents, but radier diat diey represented a completely 'novel form of govemmenf, one built upon terror and ideological fiction. Where older tyrannies had used terror as an instrument for attaining or sustaining power. modern totalitarian regimes exhibited little strategie rationality in their use of tetTor. Rather, terror was no longer a means to a political end, but an end in itself. Its necessity was now jusufied by recourse to supposed laws of liistory (such as the inevitabłe triumph of die classless society) or naturę (such as die inevitability of a war between chosen' and odier degenerate' races).

For Arendt, the popular appeal of totalitarian ideologies with their capacity to mobilize populations to do their bidding. rested upon the devastation of ordered and stable contexts in which people once lived. The impact of the First Wotld War, and the Gneat Depression, and the spread of revolutionary unrest, left people open to the promulgation of

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