people begin to "act in concert," and can ebb away unexpectedly
from apparently powerful regimes.
But if her analysis of action is a message of hope in dark times,
it also carries warnings. For the other side of that miraculous
unpredictability of action is lack of control over its effects. Ac-
tion sets things in motion, and one cannot foresee even the ef-
fects of one's own initiatives, let alone control what happens
when they are entangled with other people's initiatives in the
public arena. Action is therefore deeply frustrating, for its results
can turn out to be quite different from what the actor intended.
It is because of this "haphazardness" of action amongst plural
actors that political philosophers ever since Plato have tried to
substitute for action a model of politics as making a work of art.
Following the philosopher-king who sees the ideal model and
molds his passive subjects to fit it, scheme after scheme has been
elaborated for perfect societies in which everyone conforms to
the author's blueprint. The curious sterility of Utopias comes
from the absence within them of any scope for initiative, any
room for plurality. Although it is now forty years since Arendt
made this point, mainstream political philosophy is still caught
in the same trap, still unwilling to take action and plurality seri-
ously, still searching for theoretical principles so rationally com-
pelling that even generations yet unborn must accept them, thus
making redundant the haphazard contingency of accommoda-
tions reached in actual political arenas.
Arendt observes that there are some remedies for the predic-
aments of action, but she stresses their limited reach. One is
simply the permanent possibility of taking further action to in-
terrupt apparently inexorable processes or set politics off on a
different direction, but that in itself does nothing to cure the
damage of the past or make safe the unpredictable future. Only
the human capacities to forgive and to promise can deal with
these problems, and then only in part. Faced (as so many con-
temporary polities are) with the wearisome sequence of revenge
for past wrongs that only provokes further revenge, forgiveness
can break that chain, and recent efforts at reconciliation between
the races in South Africa offer an impressive illustration of Ar-
endt's point. As she notes, however, no one can forgive himself:
[ xviii ]