The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that warfare persists not due to innate human traits or desires, but because no alternative solutions to resolve conflicts have emerged.
Hannah Arendt argues that the ongoing presence of warfare in human society cannot be attributed to a destructive nature or a fundamental drive towards aggression. Instead, she posits that war continues because there are no effective political mechanisms or alternatives that can resolve disputes between nations, highlighting the urgency for developing such substitutes to prevent further conflict.
In practice
In a debate about international relations, one might say this quote to emphasize the need for conflict resolution mechanisms.
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses its quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which must remain hidden if it is not to lose its depth in a very real, non-subjective sense.
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world.
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.
Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
It is the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings.
The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own.
The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.
No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.
Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.
The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.