Kei Hiruta

‘Berlin’s Bête Noire’ will be the first comparative study of the lives and works of Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) and Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). It makes the three-fold argument that: 1) major normative differences between the two thinkers are anchored in their conflicting views of the human condition; 2) this point of disagreement is rooted in their dispute over the inhumanity of totalitarian oppression and domination; and 3) the latter dispute in turn stems from the differences between Berlin’s Bolshevik-focused and Arendt’s Nazi-focused approaches to totalitarianism. Combining political philosophy and intellectual history, my research highlights select aspects of the protagonists’ life-stories to illuminate their multifaceted disagreement. It unearths important similarities as well as differences between Berlin and Arendt, whose (partially) shared mode of political theorising contrasts with the recent post-Rawlsian standard. It concludes with a reflection on a highly contested issue of our time, namely, the pros and cons of philosophers’ engagement in real-world politics. I argue that the attempt to make political philosophy more political is highly precarious as well as potentially fulfilling.