Hannah Arendt and the Illusion of Progress

"On Violence" is one of the essays in the book

Crises of the Republic by Hannah Arendt

 

In her essay On Violence, Hannah Arendt offers a lucid critique of the modern belief in historical progress. Writing in the late 1960s amid political upheaval, student revolts, and widespread violence in American cities, Arendt challenges the idea—deeply embedded in modern Western thought—that history moves steadily toward moral or political improvement. For Arendt, this belief is not an ancient insight but a relatively recent intellectual construction.

She traces the idea historically. In the seventeenth century, she notes, the concept of inevitable progress was largely unknown. Early modern thinkers saw human affairs as cyclical or contingent rather than steadily improving. 

Ancient Greeks looked back to a Golden Age.

Romans looked back to the founding of Rome from the ashes of Troy.

Jews and Christians look back to Eden and a march of sin only to be relieved by the Messiah.

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century began to change this perspective. Philosophers increasingly believed that reason, science, and education could gradually improve human society. By the nineteenth century, the idea of progress had hardened into something close to certainty. Scientific and technological breakthroughs seemed to demonstrate that human knowledge advanced continuously. Many thinkers then assumed that moral and political life must be advancing as well.

Arendt rejects this leap. In On Violence, she argues that technological progress does not imply moral progress. The twentieth century, in her view, destroyed that illusion. Two world wars, the rise of totalitarian regimes, and the development of weapons capable of annihilating humanity demonstrated that increased scientific capability can coexist with unprecedented brutality. Indeed, modern technology often magnifies violence rather than restrains it. For Arendt, the assumption that history inevitably turns toward improvement is therefore a philosophical error—an unsupported faith rather than a proven truth.

The arc of history occasionally bends toward justice, but can just as easily snap back toward patriarchal tyranny. 

Yet Arendt’s critique of progress does not amount to pure pessimism. Her earlier work The Human Condition offers a more subtle view of human development. In that book she analyzes the fundamental activities of human life—labor, work, and action—and explores how modern society has transformed them. Although she does not embrace the Enlightenment narrative of inevitable progress, she does acknowledge that human beings continuously reshape their world. Through “work,” humans build durable structures, institutions, and technologies that alter the conditions of life on earth. Through “action,” they create new political possibilities through persuasion.

In this sense, Arendt recognizes change and improvement, but she refuses to call it progress in the philosophical sense. Progress implies a predictable direction, a historical law guaranteeing advancement. Arendt insists that no such law exists. Human achievements remain fragile and reversible because they depend on political judgment and collective responsibility. Civilization can advance, but it can also collapse.

Another striking element of The Human Condition reinforces this position: Arendt assumes that humanity’s future will remain on earth. Writing during the early space age, she reacts skeptically to fantasies of escaping the human condition through technological mastery. Even as science expands human power, our political and moral challenges remain rooted in the earthly world we share.

Taken together, On Violence and The Human Condition reveal Arendt’s distinctive position. She rejects the comforting belief that history inevitably moves toward improvement. The catastrophes of the twentieth century demonstrate that progress is not guaranteed. Yet she does not deny human creativity or the possibility of building better institutions. What she rejects is the illusion that improvement will occur automatically.

For Arendt, the future is not secured by historical progress but shaped by human action. Whether societies become more just or more violent depends not on the momentum of history but on the choices people make.

My Dad on Political Violence

My Dad's stories about World War 2 were a big part of my childhood.  They were not the stories I saw on Combat! on TV or read in comics like Sgt. Rock or Sgt. Nick fury and His Howling Commandos.  My Dad enlisted two years before World War 2 actually started and would have gotten out in December of 1941, but no one was discharged from the Army after December 7, 1941.  My father barely made the enlistment cut-off age of 35 at the time he enlisted.  Since he was so old (35 when the war started) and had experience working in a warehouse, the Army sent him to Officer's Candidate School.  My Dad was 15 years older than the average 2nd lieutenant, so he never went overseas.  His first assignment was as a platoon leader in a Black maintenance company in the segregated Army of World War.

Shortly after he was assigned to Camp Shenango in PA, he was the officer on duty on a weekend.  That weekend there was a race riot.  My Dad went out of the headquarters and found himself in front of an armed mob.  He said the young soldier in front had "a 30 Ought 6 aimed right at my belly button."  My father told the soldier with the rifle to "take it easy."  Then he heard someone in the back say "shoot the white . . . "  The words in the rest of the description got coarser as I got older.  I'll assume Motherf##cker was the used at some point.  

Hearing the cowards in the back egging the man in front on, my Dad spoke to the shaking young man in front with the rifle.  "If you pull that trigger the MPs are going to shoot you.  If they don't shoot you they'll hang you.  Nothing will happen to the son of a bitch in the back telling you what to do."  The soldier put down his rifle.  My Dad ordered the men back to their barracks and as far as I know never said anything further about the incident.  He commanded a black company before being reassigned to Fort Indiantown Gap and a German Prisoner of War Camp in Reading.  He kept in touch with some of his sergeants after the war.

Lately I have heard several people say that the Liberty Tree is watered with the blood of Patriots.  When someone on the radio says this to his audience, you can bet he means their blood, not his.  My Dad was a Massachusetts Republican as long as I can remember and would still be one if he were alive now (He would be 104).  But he was a man who never backed down from a fight and had no use for "rabble rousers" the kind of people who start trouble and let others take the risks. 

I must have heard that story 50 times growing up.  I don't know why, but I did not think of that particular story until a few days ago, but it does help me understand why I dislike the current Patriot movement.  Talk Radio hosts by definition "lead" from the back, not from the front.  I just returned from serving in Iraq with an aviation task force in which all of the seniors officers including the commander flew missions--they led from the cockpit, not just from their desks.