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Arendt You Can T Have Your Cake And Eat Too Summary

1968 Words8 Pages

Alexandria L. McDowell
Professor Permaul
PS 111AC
11 March 2018

You Can’t Have Your Cake, and Eat Too. Or can you?

In Arendt’s chapter 4, Foundation I, she expressively articulates and even praises the separation of powers, which in her mind, prevents a centralized or even an authoritarian government from arising. She describes the separation of power as a way in which we can embrace freedom without the control of government oversight. This is due to checks and balances on the federal government and state governments. While this may seem like the perfect vision of what makes for a bullet proof idea of an authoritarian proof government, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because we are preventing the federal government from becoming …show more content…

In this essay, I will argue that Arendt has a not so obvious blind spot in her analysis when compared to Robinson. While Arendt praises the separation of powers between the state and federal governments, as a means of preventing the rise of a centralized government, Robinson explains that this separation of power was, in fact, a preservation of …show more content…

While Arendt holds on to this idea that the separation of power is a way to keep a centralized government from rising to tyranny, she seems more concerned with this idea of individual happiness without road blocks. She overall ignores that this came at a very high cost for the African-American community. Robinson on the other hand addresses this unapologetically. Robinson makes the better argument because he reads between the lines of what our society was at the time and what our society wanted to be. In Arendt’s analysis, how is the American dream any different from the days of control of the lords over the surfs? How can our federal government stand for one set of ideals, while the states stand for another? These are the questions that Arendt doesn’t

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