The Political Theorist in the Public Realm: The Place of Theory in Arendt’s Pluralistic Politics of ‘Words and Deeds’

Political theorists are in the midst of a debate on their role in public policy and politics. Despite this growing literature, there is little scholarship on Arendt’s public commentaries and their relationship to her academic work. Although the role of the public intellectual is often attributed to Arendt, she rejects this label, as well as that of the philosopher and the social scientist. Building on these distinctions, I argue that Arendt seeks to reduce the tension between philosophy and politics by assuming the role of the political theorist, who not only studies how men appear in public, but also intervenes in debates in the public realm. I illustrate how the Origins of Totalitarianism serves as a work of political theory that elides the distinction between academic and public-facing work, before reflecting on Arendt’s contribution to contemporary debates on the relation of theory to practice within political theory and political science.