Chapter 3 of "On Revolution" by Hannah Arendt, titled "The Pursuit of Happiness", explores the impact of the American and French Revolutions on the concepts of public happiness, political freedom, and civil liberties. Arendt highlights how these revolutions led to a conflict between private interests and the common good, with private interests being pitted against the common good.
Following her discussion in the previous chapters of "On Revolution", Arendt discusses the differences between the American and French Revolutions, with the former being a foundation of freedom and the latter being about the liberation of man. The author explores how the revolutions led to a sharp distinction between the private and public realms, with citizens having to discover the sharpness of the distinction between the two principles during the revolutions.
Arendt argues that the American Revolution was driven by a desire to establish a realm of public happiness for citizens, whereas the French Revolution was more concerned with public freedom. The author also explores the impact of mass immigration from Europe on the course of events in America after the revolution, leading to the dream of a promised land where milk and honey flow.
In summary, Arendt discusses how the conversion of the citizen of the revolutions into the private individual of nineteenth-century society has determined the physiognomy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The pursuit of affluence and consumption has threatened the political realm in America, and the dream of a promised land where desires are fulfilled has overshadowed the original ideals of the American Revolution.
