The Tension Between Action and Revolution in Arendt's Thought

In On Revolution, published in 1963, Hannah Arendt constitutes a conceptual duality and even an opposition between the French and American Revolutions implying that the French Revolution is not action whereas the American Revolution is an experience of political action and freedom. The book analyzes her interpretation of the French Revolution and modern revolutions in general under the light of her conception of action developed in The Human Condition, published in 1958. It is argued that, the existentialist and romantic definition of action in The Human Condition requires Arendt to consider the French Revolution as an experience of action in contrast to what she implied in On Revolution. This work aims to reveal the different aspects of the tensious and, in certain ways, problematic relation between action and revolution in Arendt¿s political thought. For finding out the discontinuities and inconsistencies between her conception of action and her interpretation of the French Revolution, the two primary texts of Arendt (The Human Condition and On Revolution) are analyzed in a detailed manner.