Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

148Chapter 4She opposes "power" (Macht) to "violence" ( Gewalt) ; that is, sheopposes the consensus-achieving force of a communication aimedat reaching understanding to the capacity for instrumentalizinganother's will for one's own purposes: "Power corresponds to thehuman ability not just to act but to act in concert."14 A communicativepower of this kind can develop only in undeformed publicspheres; it can issue only from structures of undamagedintersubjectivity found in nondistorted communication. It ariseswhere opinion- and will-formation instantiate the productive forceof the "enlarged mentality" given with the unhindered communicativefreedom each one has "to make public use of one's reason atevery point." This enlargement is accomplished by "comparing ourjudgment with the possible rather than the actual judgments ofothers, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man."15Arendt conceives political power neither as a potential for assertingone's own interests or for realizing collective goals, nor as theadministrative power to implement collectively binding decisions,but rather as an authorizingforce expressed in 'jurisgenesis"-thecreation of legitimate law-and in the founding of institutions. Itmanifests itself in orders that protect political liberty; in resistanceagainst the forms of repression that threaten political liberty. internally or externally; and above all in the freedom-founding actsthat bring new institutions and laws "into existence."16 It emergesin its purest form in those moments when revolutionaries seize thepower scattered through the streets; when a population committedto passive resistance opposes foreign tanks with their bare hands;when convinced minorities dispute the legitimacy of existing lawsand engage in civil disobedience; when the sheer 'joy of action"breaks through in protest movements. Again and again, it is thesame phenomenon, the close kinship of communicative action with theproduction of legitimate law, that Arendt tracks down in differenthistoric events and whose exemplar she found in the constitutionmakingforce of the American Revolution.In contrast to the constructions of modern natural law, the basicdistinction between "power" and "violence" aligns power with law.In the natural-law tradition, the transition from the state of natureto society was supposed to be characterized by the fact that theparties to the social contract renounce liberties rooted in the