Infertility

In On Revolution, Arendt articulated two competing ontologies of human community.

Pointing to the stories of Cain and Abel and of Romulus and Remus, she claimed that the founding stories of "our biblical and secular traditions" conveyed a sobering truth: "whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide." But if human community originated in bloodshed—"in the beginning was a crime"—salvation commenced in peace: "in the beginning was the Word." Once again, action miraculously saves the world.

Yet Arendt never reconciles these two political ontologies.

If crime lies at the origin of community—and Arendt seems clearly to think violence the more historically probable ontology—then it is hard to see how words can avoid being tarnished.

And if action is as unconditioned and arbitrary as Arendt conceives it, how can it avoid becoming another form of violence?

But if the world and human community are founded in an order of love, peace, and plenty, then we—those rooted in Christian theology—would have to recognize that Arendt's difficulti...

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