A Work Unto Itself

Art and Commodification in Arendt’s Thought

Marina Barnes

Hannah Arendt dedicates only one chapter of The Human Condition to works of art. In this chapter, she classifies the production of art as a work of the homo faber who fashions the human artifice. However, art does not fit neatly into Arendt’s category of work. The creative process of the artist differs from that of the standard worker, and works of art differ from standard use objects both in form and function. Art also contravenes the principle of utility that generally governs work. These distinct characteristics help art avoid the degradation experienced by the world of things when society lives for consumption alone. While Arendt argues that the modern society treats formerly durable objects as consumable goods, the unique durability and revelatory quality of art enables it to resist this commodification.

This paper addresses the role of art in Arendt’s thought and in the consumer society in three parts. First, it examines the elements of the work of art that distinguish it from other objects produced through work. From there, it turns to a discussion of art’s relationship to the categories of means and ends. Finally, it explores the role art plays in society, focusing in particular on the consumptive society’s treatment of art. This paper ultimately concludes that the same qualities that set works of art apart from other fabricated objects enable art to withstand the modern attempt to reduce art to a consumptive good.

Before engaging in such a discussion, it is important to clarify what is meant by “art.” Though Arendt never offers a singular definition of art, she refers to numerous different products of creative expression as art. Beyond the obvious example of the visual arts, Arendt includes music, poetry, literature, theater, and

architecture in her discussion. While such a list could arguably be expanded further without doing any injustice to Arendt, this paper takes a conservative approach and limits its discussion of art to the above forms specifically referenced by Arendt in The Human Condition. 1

The Uniqu eness of t he Work of Art

Arendt begins her discussion of art in The Human Condition by identifying works of art as the “most intensely worldly of all tangible things.” 2 Art possesses a durability that goes deeper than that of most objects and thus has the potential to “attain permanence throughout the ages.” 3 This durability stems from art’s distance from the life process, which allows the work of art to remain “almost untouched by the corroding effect of natural processes.” 4 In this way, art differs from objects that are continually subject to the use of living creatures and slowly crumble from the weight. Though more lasting than the products of labor, such objects are gradually destroyed by the “wearing-out process [that] comes about through the contact of the use object with the living consuming organism.” 5 Meanwhile, the work of art is carefully “removed from the exigencies and wants of daily life” so as to protect it from the destruction of the life process and preserve its beauty. 6

The distance between art and the life process does not develop by happenstance; rather, it occurs when men recognize the intrinsic value of art and choose to preserve it through the centuries. Because art is designed to be appreciated rather than used, it forms the most stable and permanent part of the human artifice: “It is as though worldly stability had become transparent in the permanence of art, so that a premonition of immortality, not the immortality of the soul or of life but of something immortal achieved by mortal hands, has become tangibly present, to shine and to be seen, to sound and to be heard, to speak and to be read.” 7

1. It is worth noting that some of the attributes of “art” discussed in this paper may not apply uniformly to each individual art form. For instance, the process of composing music is clearly different from the process of sculpting a statute. However, the characteristics described in this paper as applying to art in general typically fit at least several of the identified art forms. When appropriate, I will stop to note where a characteristic of art or the artistic process does not apply to a particular art form. 2. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 167. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 138. 6. Ibid., 167. 7. Ibid., 168.

Artists construct the human artifice by turning thoughts into things, reifying what were formerly mere objects of the imagination. This process sounds similar to the fabricating of use objects based on models; however, the artist’s transfiguration of thought into thing is a distinct process for Arendt. In The Life of the Mind, Arendt articulates the idea of art as a “thought-thing:” “art works are thought-things, and what gives them their meaning—as though they were not just themselves but for themselves—is precisely the transformation they have undergone when thinking took possession of them.” 8 In her book Doing Aesthetics with Arendt, Cecilia Sjoholm notes that the concept of a “thought-thing” is borrowed from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where it is used to reference “ideas that cannot be experienced or intuited” and can only be conceived of through pure reason. 9 However, Arendt’s use of the term is different from Kant’s. Sjoholm explains that Arendt uses “thought-thing” to refer to an object produced by the intellect in “defiance of the fleeting character of thought processes.” 10 The creation of a work of art thus differs from the fabrication of a use object, which is guided by a model or idea that exists “outside the fabricator.” 11 The creative process is thus more akin to multiplication in that it “multiplies something that already possesses a relatively stable, relatively permanent existence in the world.” 12 The artist’s creation of a thought-thing, on the other hand, brings something entirely new into the world: it is not a replication but a birth.

As thought-things, “[w]orks of art are situated between the real and the unreal, in an uncanny borderland where thought touches itself through the sensible qualities of the work.” 13 The thought-thing quality of art can thus have a dizzying effect. Sjoholm elaborates: “We are immersed in the multiplicity of appearances, perspectives, and senses, but we are used to things appearing in a certain way. The thought-thing brings us out of context, as if the thing itself is possessed by a thought and quickly loses its grip on reality.” 14

The transfiguration of thought into thing is not without cost. Arendt argues that “this reification and materialization, without which no thought can become a tangible thing, is always paid for, and that the price is life itself.” 15 Indeed, Arendt claims that “deadness” is “present in all art and indicat[es], as it

8. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 184. 9. Cecilia Sjoholm, Doing Aesthetics with Arendt: How to See Things (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 50. 10. Ibid., 51. 11. Arendt, The Human Condition, 140. 12. Ibid., 142. 13. Sjoholm, 52. 14. Ibid., 53. 15. Arendt, The Human Condition, 169.

were, the distance between thought’s original home in the heart or head of man and its eventual destination in the world.” 16 However, she does admit that the completeness of this death varies based on the type of art, as some forms of art remain more thought than thing. For instance, she declares that “[o]f all things of thought, poetry is closest to thought, and a poem is less a thing than any other work of art.” 17 Because poetry’s material is language, it is the “most human and least worldly of the arts.” 18 Music also possesses a more thought-like quality and retains more of a living spirit than most other forms of art. 19 Even after a composer fully notates his composition, musicians who perform the piece in the years to come will offer their own interpretations of his work. Although Arendt does not mention it specifically, theater operates similarly in that every production of a play is unique, given that different directors, producers, actors, and set designers bring the story to life differently.

However, Arendt does not view such performances as a true restoration of life to the otherwise dead work of art. Instead, she describes such performances as temporary resurrections of the living spirit in the art: “it is always the ‘dead letter’ in which the ‘living spirit’ must survive, a deadness from which it can be rescued only when the dead letter comes again into contact with a life willing to resurrect it, although this resurrection of the dead shares with all living things that it, too, will die again.” 20 On first glance, this deadness appears to reduce art to the status of other fabricated objects, but such an interpretation ignores a key distinction between the two. The resurrection of a work of art comes as a result of the art’s contact with a living being—the very same contact that condemns the use object to eventual destruction. Unlike with other work products, man’s engagement with art enlivens rather than erodes.

Works of art do not emerge finished; indeed, every work of art owes its existence to an artist. Of course, such a statement is in no way profound. Every created object, artistic or otherwise, must have a creator. However, the relationship between the art and the artist is more personal than the relationship between the use product and the worker. Arendt notes that “[t]he modern age’s obsession with the unique signature of each artist, its unprecedented sensitivity to style, shows a preoccupation with those features by which the artist transcends his skill and workmanship in a way similar to the way each person’s uniqueness transcends the sum total of his qualities.” 21 The work of art distinguishes the

16. Arendt, The Human Condition, 169. 17. Ibid., 170. 18. Ibid., 169. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid.

artist in much the same way as action discloses the identity of the actor. It is no mistake that we refer to a painting by Monet as “a Monet” or a sonata by Mozart as “a Mozart.” Though Arendt does not elevate art to the level of action, she does say that it is “this transcendence [that] distinguishes the great work of art from all other products of human hands.” 22

It is true that objects intended primarily for their use can be artistically crafted. As Arendt says, “whatever has a shape at all and is seen cannot help being either beautiful, ugly, or something in-between.” 23 Consequently, “there is in fact no thing that does not in some way transcend its functional use, and its transcendence, its beauty or ugliness, is identical with appearing publicly and being seen.” 24 With art, however, there is often no clear functional use to transcend. The beauty of a work of art is no accident; rather, art is created to be seen.

Art thus seeks a space of appearance. Mel Topf explains that, while “the creation of art…is a private matter, art itself is a public—that is a political— one.” 25 Arendt thinks the exchange market that serves as the space of appearance for use objects should not satisfy the artist, as works of art “are not exchangeable and therefore defy equalization through a common denominator such as money.” 26 As a result, Arendt says any time art enters the exchange market, it will inevitably be arbitrarily priced. 27 In its desire for a space of appearance, art is very similar to action. 28 Indeed, Dana Villa notes that Arendt has an “aesthetic interpretation of action,” as seen by her frequent comparisons between political actors and performing artists. 29 Villa takes this comparison further, writing, “The glorification of appearance that takes place in art and self-contained action endows the world with a meaning that it otherwise lacks: both activities make the world beautiful; both escape the reduction of meaning that characterizes modernity.” 30

Art could arguably be classified as a kind of action. Both art and action reveal the identity of their creator and need a space of appearance. Arendt’s description of action as “the actualization of the human condition of natality” seems equally applicable to art, as every time an artist creates a work of art,

22. Arendt, The Human Condition, 169. 23. Ibid., 172-173. 24. Ibid., 173. 25. Mel Topf, “Hannah Arendt: Literature and the Public Realm,” College English 40, no. 4 (1978): 357, https://www.jstor.org/stable/376254. 26. Arendt, The Human Condition, 167. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Dana Villa, “Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of Political Action,” Political Theory 20, no. 2 (1992): 280, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/192004. 30. Ibid., 287.

“something uniquely new comes into the world.” 31 However, instead of considering art a type of action, Arendt characterizes art as the handmaiden of action. She says that “acting and speaking men need the help of homo faber in his highest capacity, that is, the help of the artist, of poets and historiographers, of monument-builders or writers, because without them the only product of their activity, the story they enact and tell, would not survive at all.” 32 George Kateb comments that “the revelations of action are perfected only in art, the great poems, plays, epics, histories.” 33 The durability of art counteracts the frailty of human action.

From this cursory examination, it is clear the work of art is distinguishable from the average use object in several key ways. Works of art are the most durable and permanent of all objects, as they are best able to resist the degradation caused by encounters with living beings. As a representation of the thought of the artist, a work of art reveals the identity of its creator to the world in a way that most use objects never can. Because of this, art also has a unique need for a public realm of appearance. However, important though all of these differences are, they do not touch on one of the most crucial differences between works of art and use objects: their relationship with utility.

Art and Ut ilit y

According to Arendt, utility governs both the work process and the work product. The end not only justifies the means in the work process; “it produces and organizes them.” 34 After the desired end is identified, “everything [in the work process] is judged in terms of suitability and usefulness for the desired end, and for nothing else.” 35 However, while the end product governs the process, the produced object never becomes an end in itself. Immediately after the conclusion of the work process, the created object turns into a means to a new end: “It has now become an object among objects, that is, it has been added to the huge arsenal of the given from which homo faber selects freely his means to pursue his ends.” 36 In this sense, the relationship between means and ends in the work process is “very much like a chain whose every end can serve again as a means in some other context.” 37

Arendt argues that “there is no way to end the chain of means and prevent

31. Arendt, The Human Condition, 178. 32. Ibid., 173. 33. George Kateb, “Freedom and Worldliness in the Thought of Hannah Arendt,” Political Theory 5, no. 2 (1977): 154, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/190726. 34. Arendt, The Human Condition, 153. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 155. 37. Ibid., 153-154.

all ends from eventually being used again as means, except to declare that one thing or another is ‘an end in itself.’” 38 Unfortunately, Arendt says that the idea of an end in itself is incomprehensible to the homo faber, who has “an innate incapacity to understand the distinction between utility and meaningfulness.” 39 This is where Arendt’s classification of the artist as homo faber becomes baffling. Indeed, art seems to be the quintessential example of an end in itself. To say that the artist has no conception of meaning and engages in the artistic process for the sake of utility alone seems to miss the point.

That is not to say the artistic process has no connection to utility. It is true that the artist views the material worked upon as a means to the end of producing art. To the painter, the brush and canvas are tools that exist for the sake of creating a masterpiece. Because of this, some philosophers have described the artistic process as inherently violent. In his 1795 On the Aesthetic Education of Man, German philosopher Friedrich Schiller writes:

When the artisan lays hands upon the formless mass in order to shape it to his ends, he has no scruple in doing it violence; for the natural material he is working merits no respect for itself, and his concern is not with the whole for the sake of its parts, but with the parts for the sake of the whole. When the artist lays hands upon the same mass, he has just as little scruple in doing it violence; but he avoids showing it. For the material he is handling he has not a whit more respect than has the artisan; but the eye which would seek to protect the freedom of the material he will endeavor to deceive by a show of yielding to the latter. 40

Arendt references Schiller in her essay “Culture and Politics,” and Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb argues that Arendt refines and revises Schiller’s ideas through her work. 41 Arendt describes the homo faber in the same way Schiller describes the artist: “This element of violation and violence is present in all fabrication, and homo faber, the creator of the human artifice, has always been a destroyer of nature.” 42

However, violence seems to be accidental to the artistic process rather than essential. While it is easy to see the violence that underlies many visual arts, such as in a statue or mosaic, this violence is not so readily apparent in all art

38. Arendt, The Human Condition, 154. 39. Ibid. 40. Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, trans. Elizabeth Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 219. 41. Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb, Introduction to Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Literature and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), xxiv. 42. Arendt, The Human Condition, 139.

forms. Works of art that retain more of their thought-quality, such as music and poetry, do not rely on the manipulation of the physical to the same extent as visual arts. Arendt contends that such art forms are still violent even if to a lesser extent. The poet, she says, “violates his material as well; he does not sing like the bird living in the tree.” 43 But such an assessment seems too limited. By painting a picture with words, the poet commits no violent act against language. Using words metaphorically in a poem in no way undermines their literal use in other contexts. If anything, the poet elevates language, imbuing it with beauty and allowing it to transcend common speech. Far from violating language, poetry frees it.

Even when violence does accompany the artistic process, it is redeemed by the intrinsic value of the finished work of art. The weight of violence in the fabrication process for use objects can become oppressive due to the never-ending chain of means and ends. Immediately upon the completion of the fabrication process, the object that has been created through the act of violence becomes a tool for violence itself. Art, on the other hand, is created for its meaning, not its utility. Because the work of art is an end in and of itself, the violence ends as soon as the artistic process is complete. When the sculptor sets down his chisel for the last time, the violence departs, leaving in its stead a deep sense of awe.

Ultimately, though it does use materials as a means to an end during the creative process, art transcends the standard of utility that governs other fabricated objects. This is arguably art’s most distinctive characteristic and is the source of its permanence. The work of art is designed to be appreciated rather than used; as such, it is preserved from the erosion brought upon other objects by the exigencies of daily life. In a world ruled by utility, art reminds us of the deeper desire for meaning. Though she does not discuss the difference in art’s relationship with utility in The Human Condition, Arendt does note in The Life of the Mind that art is born out of the human pursuit of meaning. She writes, “if [men] were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions, [they] would lose…the ability to produce those thought things that we call works of art.” 44 Conversely, as long as society preserves great works of art, the search for meaning is not wholly hopeless.

Because art is recognized as meaningful rather than useful, works of art are passed down from generation to generation as a cultural inheritance. Arendt explains that the “objective status of the cultural world…insofar as it contains tangible things—books and paintings, statues, buildings, and music—comprehends, and gives testimony to, the entire recorded past of countries, nations, and

43. Hannah Arendt, “Culture and Politics,” in Reflections On Literature and Culture, ed. Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 192. 44. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 62.

ultimately mankind.” 45 Though created by a similar process of fabrication, works of art thus reach beyond the ordinary durability of use objects to grasp immortality. We protect works of art from the exigencies of life because we recognize that “they are fabricated not for men, but for the world which is meant to outlast the life-span of mortals, the coming and going out of the generations.” 46

Art in Societ y

Though art is a crucial part of a society’s cultural inheritance, it is not always treated as such. In the modern consumer society, the threat to art is greater than ever before. Arendt traces the devolution in society’s treatment of art in her essay “The Crisis in Culture.” This began when society was overtaken by what Arendt refers to as “philistinism.” 47 The term designates a mentality that “judge[s] everything in terms of immediate usefulness and ‘material values.’” 48 Because art is not created for utility, philistinism dismissed works of art as useless. The resulting society thus grew disinterested in art. 49

By itself, philistinism did not pose a significant threat to art. As Arendt points out, artists were well accustomed to fighting to obtain recognition of their work’s value. 50 However, a more dangerous breed of philistine soon evolved: the “cultural philistine.” 51 The cultural philistine took the works of art that those around him had despised as useless and “seized upon them as a currency by which he bought a higher position in society or acquired a higher degree of self-esteem.” 52 The former disinterest in art quickly dissipated; in its stead grew a shallow fascination with art for the purpose of social advancement. No longer viewed as useless, art now became seen as a status symbol.

It may be tempting to view this as a positive development in society’s relationship with art. Surely it is better for art to be appreciated for a perverted purpose than to be ignored or forgotten. However, Arendt argues that the cultural philistine’s misuse of art posed a dangerous threat to art’s immortality. She writes that “as soon as the immortal works of the past became the object of social and individual refinement and the status accorded to it, they lost their most important and elemental quality, which is to grasp and move the reader or

45. Hannah Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance,” in Between Past and Future (New York: The Viking Press, 1961), 202. 46. Ibid., 209. 47. Ibid., 201. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 204. 52. Ibid.

the spectator over the centuries.” 53 The cultural philistine was drawn to sweet, light art that offered an escape from the realities of the lower regions of society. 54 The demand for such art quickly resulted in the mass proliferation of kitsch during the nineteenth century. 55 Arendt says that many artists began to rebel against this trend, having “smelled the danger of being expelled from reality into a sphere of refined talk where what they did would lose all meaning.” 56

Unfortunately, an even greater danger lay ahead. Arendt believes that we have now moved from the cultured philistine society to a consumer (or mass) society. Rather than merely devaluate art, the consumer society devours it. Arendt explains:

Perhaps the chief difference between society and mass society is that society wanted culture, evaluated and evaluated cultural things into social commodities, used and abused them for its own selfish purposes, but did not “consume” them. Even in their most worn-out shapes these things remained things and retained a certain objective character; they disintegrated until they looked like a heap of rubble, but they did not disappear. Mass society, on the contrary, wants not culture but entertainment, and the wares offered by the entertainment industry are indeed consumed by society just like any other consumer goods. 57

Rather than being distanced from the life process as works of art, products of entertainment are subsumed into the cycle of labor, filling in the leftover time not devoted to labor or sleep. 58 As such, these entertainment products are not actually things at all: they were never intended to become a part of the human artifice; rather, they were intentionally designed for immediate consumption. 59

Perhaps if the entertainment industry simply created its own consumer goods and left the human artifice untouched, it could be dismissed as a mere annoyance or a sign of society’s lack of taste. Unfortunately, the standards of the entertainment industry have bled over into the world of art. Arendt writes, “the extent to which we use [the standards of freshness and novelty] today to judge cultural and artistic objects as well, things which are supposed to remain in the world even after we have left it, indicates clearly the extent to which the need

53. Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture,” 203. 54. Ibid., 202. 55. Ibid., 203. 56. Ibid., 202. 57. Ibid., 205. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 206.

for entertainment has begun to threaten the cultural world.” 60 In order to satisfy the “gargantuan appetite” of the consumer society, the entertainment industry inevitably turns to past great works of art to find new material and begins to “feed…on the cultural objects of the world.” 61 Of course, these works cannot simply be offered as they are; they cannot be digested easily enough in their original form. The entertainment industry thus alters art to make it consumable. Arendt observes that the “objects themselves are changed, rewritten, condensed, digested, reduced to kitsch in reproduction, or in preparation for the movies.” 62 Some works of art may survive this process—but others may not. While “[t] here are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect…it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.” 63

Arendt suggests that the damage done by the consumer society may be irreversible, as its appetitive attitude “spells ruin to everything it touches.” 64 However, the situation may be less hopeless than it appears. Jerome Stolnitz rebuts Arendt’s assessment of modern society. While he agrees that the entertainment industry has attempted to transform high art into a consumptive good, he does not believe these efforts have had any lasting effect. 65 Modernized versions of high art never linger long, but their eventual disintegration does no damage to the original work of art. Great though it may be, Stolnitz argues that the appetite for entertainment has not eliminated the desire for high art. In fact, he believes that “no century other than this one can boast greater knowledge of or concern with authenticity—of musical scores, instrumentation, styles, and performance techniques, of dramatic and literary texts and theatrical techniques, and of the provenance of works of visual art.” 66 Stolnitz concludes that “[high] art perdures, as it always has, sustained by its unique goodness, kept unimpaired by the institutions, scholars, critics and audiences, who know the difference.” 67 Those who recognize art’s intrinsic meaning and view it as a cultural inheritance in need of conservation will not be swayed by the call of the entertainment industry.

However, it is not just the attention of the educated that has helped art survive the rampages of the consumptive society. Art testifies to its own intrinsic value, and this testimony cannot be silenced, no matter how much kitsch and

60. Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture,” 206. 61. Ibid., 211. 62. Ibid., 207. 63. Ibid., 207-208. 64. Ibid., 211. 65. Jerome Stolnitz, “On the Apparent Demise of Really High Art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43, no. 4 (1985): 351, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/429896. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid.

cheap entertainment the consumer society produces. Even the consuming man can sense the unique beauty of a truly great work of art. When Notre Dame burned, the whole world mourned—not because an object of utility had been lost, but because a seemingly immortal piece of the world had been stripped away. When a great work of art is destroyed, even the most common of men can recognize the loss.

Ordinary use objects are treated as consumable goods because they can be replaced relatively easily, given that the fabrication process is already based on multiplication. As such, most people are untroubled by the way society devours the formerly durable objects, failing to recognize that the very framework for human life is being destroyed. Great works of art, on the other hand, cannot be truly replicated. The artist’s creative process does not consist of the multiplication of an already existing model; it is the birth of something new. Though it fails to recognize the importance of use objects in upholding the human artifice, even the consumer society cannot help but acknowledge the intrinsic value of a great work of art. Consequently, while it certainly tries to profit from art, the consumer society would not dare to actually destroy it.

Conclu sion

Arendt is correct that the consumer society’s tendency to devour everything in its path threatens the stability of the human world. However, art does not fall prey to the devouring life process in the same way as other objects. Even the consumptive man can feel the pull of a beautiful work of art and recognize that he has come face-to-face with something truly unique. Art thus reminds the consumptive man of the potential for immortality, lifting his eyes up from the cycle of labor.

Arendt, Hannah. “The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance.” In Between Past and Future, 197-226. New York: The Viking Press, 1961.

———. “Culture and Politics.” In Reflections On Literature and Culture, edited by Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb, 179-204. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

———. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

———. The Life of the Mind. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.

Gottlieb, Susannah Young-ah. Introduction to Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Literature and Culture, xi-xxxi. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Kateb, George. “Freedom and Worldliness in the Thought of Hannah Arendt.” Political Theory 5, no. 2 (1977): 141-82. https://www.jstor.org/stable/ pdf/190726.

Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters. Translated by Elizabeth Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

Sjoholm, Cecilia. Doing Aesthetics with Arendt: How to See Things. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Stolnitz, Jerome. “On the Apparent Demise of Really High Art.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43, no. 4 (1985): 345-58. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/pdf/429896.

Topf, Mel. “Hannah Arendt: Literature and the Public Realm.” College English 40, no. 4 (1978): 353-63. https://www.jstor.org/stable/376254.

Villa, Dana. “Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of Political Action.” Political Theory 20, no. 2 (1992): 274-308. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/192004.