tony curzon price's Library tagged arendt →  View Popular

“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.”

Hannah Arendt, 1906-1975, German political philosopher

It is thus only in action and speech, in
interacting with others through words and deeds, that individuals
reveal who they personally are and can affirm their unique identities.
Action and speech are in this sense very closely related because both
contain the answer to the question asked of every newcomer: “Who
are you?” This disclosure of the “who” is made
possible by both deeds and words, but of the two it is speech that has
the closest affinity to revelation. Without the accompaniment of
speech, action would lose its revelatory quality and could no longer
be identified with an agent. It would lack, as it were, the conditions
of ascription of agency.