New Conventions for Old 195Politics, in the republic, therefore requires a level of intelligence and psychological
maturity—which Arendt refers to as an ‘enlarged mentality’. In other words, politics
and thepublic thingrequires a level of seasoned thoughtfulness. Republican citizen-
ship is more than just a legal or moral status. It implies a special form of human dignity
and a certain range of duties. The public thing does not absorb or muffle individual
citizens in some form of common good or overarching unanimity, it rather celebrates
their activity and debate in the public forum. Arendt envisages the public forum or
public thing as a space for open discussion against the background of constitutional
arrangements. This is not the realm of citizen soldier, of earlier Machiavellian repub-
licanism, conversely it is a realm of participation in judgement, debate, and authority.
This space allows the development of the capacity for judgement. Debate and delib-
eration, in this sphere, is between constitutionally equal citizens. It endows human
life with significance.
The ‘public thing’ is therefore not about power, force, or violence, but rather about
a sharing of argument and judgement. A challenge to this mentality is embedded
in the social and economic spheres. These latter themes are essentially, for Arendt,
the non-political ideas, which can undermine the ‘public thing’. One unexpected
implication of her argument here is her interest in small-scale participatory councils.
This is not an antiquarian or utopian interest in small-scale participatory democracy,
although she was fascinated, for example, with Jefferson’s idea of the ‘ward system’
of local councils. This is also not a crass populism. In fact, it is rather a way of
trying to encourage, or ‘make possible’, some active citizen participation in the ‘pub-
lic thing’ (which was crucial for the maintenance of civilized human existence and
human freedom). Interestingly, Canovan (contra Pettit) reads Arendt here astotally
distinct from communitarianism (see Canovan 1994: 248; Beiner in Villa (ed.) 2000:
44). Arendt was trying, in effect, to bring plurality and the public world within an
institutional framework. This is no bland utopia, rather, ‘Arendt was always finely
balanced between pessimism about the capacity of human beings to establish “lasting
institutions”, and optimism at the thought that each new member of the human race
is, after all, capable of joining with others to make a new beginning amid the ruins of
the old’ (Canovan 1994: 249).
In summary Arendt is a sophisticated republican. Her argument for the ‘public
thing’ is focused on the values of public equality and non-resilient liberty, which it
contains. The ‘public thing’ is the essence of civilized and rational politics, which,
at the same time, is not a bland unanimity, but rather contains diversity and
pluralism. On one level, the republican stateispolitics to Arendt. Her interest in
participatory mechanisms is simply indicative of her concern to involve citizens in
the agora of public debate, deliberation, and authority. It facilitates the develop-
ment of human thought and judgement. The only point to note here, which no
doubt is a source for critical commentary, is that her project is not systematically
presented, that is, there is no one definitive work that contains her political the-
ory. She herself was self-consciously unsystematic. Further, it is also a project which
remains, in many essentials, unfinished, particularly in the area of republican political
theory.^24