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Work #189 · Late (after Eichmann in Jerusalem)

On Revolution

Hannah Arendt
1963 · English
Political-historical study in six chapters · Twentieth-century political philosophy

The lost treasure of revolution — public freedom rediscovered, then forgotten. The American success and the French failure

Attribute Fingerprint

Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.

Attribute On Revolution (Late (after Eichmann in Jerusalem))
Time · Extent Infinite
Time · Ontological Status Substantival
Time · Grain Continuous
Time · Freedom Non-Deterministic
Time · Traversability Linear
Time · Dimensionality One
Time · Direction Uni-directional
Space · Extent Infinite
Space · Ontological Status Substantival
Space · Curvature Flat
Space · Dimensionality Three
Space · Locality Local
Matter · Extent Infinite
Matter · Ontological Status Substantival
Matter · Conservation Conserved
Matter · Dimensionality Three
Matter · Locality Local
Observer · Time Instance Single
Observer · Space Instance Single
Observer · Knowledge Extent Partial
Observer · Knowledge Retainment Total
Observer · Physicality Embodied
Observer · Agency Active
Observer · Number Plural
Observer · Metaphysical Agency None
Observer · Moral Authority Reason
Observer · Theological Method
Energy · Extent Infinite
Energy · Ontological Status Substantival
Energy · Conservation Conserved
Energy · Dispersibility Irreversible
Information · Ontological Status Substantival
Information · Cosmic Conservation Conserved
Information · Personal Conservation Conserved
Information · Granularity Continuous

Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence

What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.

Time

On Revolution

Historical political time — the eighteenth-century revolutionary moments as the decisive temporal sites of modern political founding.

Space

On Revolution

The public space of political action — constituted in the revolutionary moment, preserved or lost in the post-revolutionary institutions.

Matter

On Revolution

Embodied political actors and the institutional apparatus they constructed; the material conditions (poverty, the social question) that shaped the political possibilities.

Observer

On Revolution

The revolutionary citizen as the central observer — plural, embodied, active in political founding. No metaphysical framework.

Energy

On Revolution

The political energies of revolutionary action — "the lost treasure" of public freedom as the central energetic content.

Information

On Revolution

Constitutional documents and political institutions as the preserved information of the revolutionary moment; tradition's failure to remember the revolutionary experience.

Internal Tensions

Where each work's argument pulls against itself.

On Revolution

On Revolution's celebration of the American founding has been criticised for underestimating slavery and Native dispossession (both fundamental to the American constitutional achievement). Its critique of the French Revolution's "social question" has been controversial in social-democratic and liberation-theological circles. The "lost treasure" of council democracy — Jefferson's ward-republics, the Paris communes, the 1956 Hungarian workers' councils — has been recovered by subsequent radical-democratic theorists (Sheldon Wolin, Miguel Abensour) as a continuing political possibility.