In modern discourse, “freedom” is often equated with individual rights, personal autonomy, or the absence of interference. But for Hannah Arendt, this liberal understanding of freedom missed the political essence of the concept. Arendt was not against rights or liberty — far from it — but she believed that true political freedom was something more collective, more active, and more rare: the capacity to participate in public power, to appear among others, to shape a shared world.
This is why Arendt didn’t describe herself as a liberal democrat, but as a republican in the classical sense — in the tradition of the Roman republic, the American Founders, and the revolutionary councils. Freedom, for her, was not a private possession. It was a practice, lived out in speech and action with others.
Modern democracies, according to Arendt, too often mistake freedom for security or comfort. When politics becomes a matter of managing needs rather than enabling action, the public realm atrophies. Citizens become consumers or spectators rather than participants. The result is a loss of what she called “public happiness” — the joy of taking part in self-government.
In particular, she celebrated the Founders’ focus on foundation: their concern not just with liberating the people from British rule, but with establishing a republic that could last. For Arendt, this act of founding — of stabilizing freedom in institutions — was the true measure of a revolution’s success.
That’s why she placed her hopes in republican structures: councils, federations, and distributed forms of participation that resist both authoritarianism and mass conformity.
If we want to preserve political freedom, Arendt teaches, we must not only protect rights. We must practice founding — again and again — wherever people come together to create a world in common.
