Kun-Feng Tu

This paper investigates Arendt’s concept of political sentiment. One key aim of this paper is to analyse her notions of passion, emotion and sentiment, as well as the relationships between them. I argue that political emotion and sentiment stem from our passion for forming relationships with others, which is facilitated by people coming up with various modes of interaction to sustain these relation- ships. Another aim of this paper is to interpret Arendt’s concept of friendship. I contend that friendship, in her view, refers not just to a duty to one’s friend and the world in-between them (the duty of “forget-me-not”) but also a universal benevolence toward whomever one happens to encounter—to one’s willingness to reach out their hand and say “I will be your friend”.

Situated against the background of Taiwan’s democratic consolidation and the escalating military threats from China, Hannah Arendt political thought has seen a significant surge in scholarly and public interest of the island. This intellectual urgency, amplified by watershed moments such as the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, has expanded Arendt’s readership beyond academia into the broader civil society. This paper examines the trajectory of this engagement by investigating scholarly research and the history of Arendt’s translation into Mandarin. It categorizes existing Taiwanese scholarship into three primary domains: (1) exegesis of her political philosophy, (2) comparative analyses with other thinkers, and (3) the application of her theoretical frameworks to contemporary issues. Through this analysis, complemented by a review of introductory publications and available translations, the paper offers a comprehensive overview of how and why Arendt’s thought has been introduced, interpreted, and utilized within Taiwan’s unique political and social landscape.

I write this article for two reasons. First, I want to share with readers around the globe what it is like to be a researcher of Arendt’s political thought in Taiwan, by which I elaborate on what she meant by intellectual responsibility. This story illustrates why writing about Arendt is by no means an easy task for one’s academic career, due to the island’s political background. This links to the second reason I want to put my experiences into words: to document my struggle against the authoritarian legacies that still linger on this democratized island. I want to clarify that, on the surface, Taiwan looks like a normal democratic country with a stable government, a growing economy, and a vigorous civil society. However, the reality is that owing to the unfinished process of transitional justice—specifically within academies, universities, and research institutions—Taiwanese scholars in the field of political science frequently face epistemic injustice. This often escalates to a form of opinion surveillance that flagrantly infringes on research ethics whenever they attempt to publish journal articles through the anonymous peer review process in Taiwan. In contrast to the academy, books, movies, workshops, reading groups, and speeches about Arendt are very popular among Taiwanese readers. My observation is that the Sunflower Student Movement in 2014 was a watershed moment for this difference—marking the divide between the academy’s unfriendly (if not hostile) attitude toward Arendt and her popularity in Taiwanese civil society.

This paper analyses the relationship between academic researchers and an authoritarian regime through theories of transitional justice and epistemic injustice to explicate how authoritarianism impacts knowledge production and development of a society. By case studies, the paper claims that although both theories could partially explain difficulties of production and spread of knowledge in the authoritarian-ruled society, it seems that each of their explanation taken solely is not adequate to address the problem. After reviewing literatures, the paper finds that (1) transitional justice seems not able to explain the negative influences on knowledge on which an authoritarian regime has put the society and that (2) epistemic injustice seems not able to account for prejudices based on the political ideology of the regime. The author thereby proposes an interdisciplinary research project between the two fields so as not merely to seek a rather full understanding of the problem but to make contributions to them.

This paper answers two questions: (1) What is the relationship between freedom and the concepts of love and the will? (2) What does this relationship mean for the concept of freedom? By reading and interpreting Hannah Arendt's political thought, this paper argues that, on the one hand, through a self-transformation of the will-or, in Arendt's language, our willing activity-the will can turn into what she called "the spring of action". Our willing activity, Arendt said, must transform itself into activities of love, which serves as "a coupling, binding agent", to achieve self-sufficiency and to aid in building relationships. On the other hand, this paper contends that without this transformation-without the will transforming itself into a loving will-we cannot even begin to take action. The loving will constitutes the impetus that propels us to step outside of our solipsistic circumstances and, as "a binding agent", to get in touch with persons and things outside of ourselves. It is this impetus, or what I call the courage of movement, that Arendt viewed not only as the spring of action but also as an invitation to freedom. Thus, the loving will refers to the will to freedom that paves the way to further political actions. Ultimately, the conclusion stresses that through Arendt’s political thought, we can understand not only why but also how love and the will are relevant to politics.

This paper analyses Arendt’s concept of political sentiment, specifically focusing on pity and solidarity. By interpreting Arendt’s text, I reveal that Arendt had an ambiguous understanding of the two concepts. The paper severs to clarify her notion that, although solidarity largely aligns with the sentiment of pity, its nature (by which it partakes of reason) makes it distinct from pity. Ultimately, solidarity is also a principle of action. This paper elaborates on the nature of pity and solidarity, contending that they lead to separate modes of interaction. While pity treats non-sufferers with cruelty and boundless violence, solidarity treats them with retaliation and bonded violence. Therefore, I argue that the interactive mode appropriate for pity is fraternity, which is not suitable for solidary action. The final aim of this paper is to discover the political implication of solidarity, contending that despite the difficulties faced by sufferers performing solidary actions, they still have possibilities to overcome these difficulties. Hence, they can say ‘we must be friends’ to their former enemies once their struggle ends.

This thesis is a study of international perpetual peace. I focus on Rousseau, Bentham and Kant’s international political thought and attempt to present readers with development of an idea “perpetual peace.” I also regard their analysis of causes of war and peace as an inspiration for reform to contemporary international politics. By doing so, I intend to elaborate three points. First, there is a traditional understanding of the idea of perpetual peace. Therefore, it seems necessary to scrutiny and improve Doyle’s Democratic Peace theory according to this tradition. Secondly, although Rousseau, Bentham and Kant respectively analyze causes of war from different perspectives, it seems they all come to the same point: International politics is multilevel-structured. In this sense, they believe that the only way to fulfil peace is to conduct a multileveled reform. Finally, similarities of causes between past wars and contemporary armed conflicts, to some extent, make past reflections on wars worth reviewing, in that prior discussions inspire us to think about the reason why wars die hard, and to search for possible, lasting and effective solutions.

This article engages with the ongoing debates over Professor Hao Yeh's new book, Shicha Zhengzhi, Zhengzhi Shicha (A Politics of Différance), by discussing the international challenges to his theory of narrative community. From a theoretical perspective, the article argues that political theories of self-determination cannot possibly contribute to the formation of a community's story despite Yeh seemingly endorsing their potential to do so. From an international legal perspective, Yeh seems to fail to explain how his theory of narrative synchronicity can deal with the différance between the story of a community and the existing story of international society. Although the article attempts to anticipate a response by exploring Iris Young's thoughts on selfdetermination, this response turns out to be unsatisfactory. Overall, Yeh must respond to these international challenges to his theory of narrative community on both the theoretical and practical levels.

This paper interprets Hannah Arendt's concept of the right to have rights (RthRs) as the collective right of a people, arguing that it is a right to build relationships equally and freely with other peoples around the world. The paper first reviews the existing literature on the concept and argue against Seyla Benhabib's reading of it. By reading and interpreting Arendt's text, I contend that the RthRs is (1) the right to politics, (2) the power of a people, which I refer to the power of a "polity" in Arendt's sense, and (3) the people's power to political actions. Such a reading attempts to explore the meaning of the RthRs as what I called the collective right of a people, which refers to neither declaration of sovereign independence nor self-determination (typically in regard to the statute of the United Nations) but to equal and free collective action, that is, to act as who we are among other peoples (including but not limited to existing sovereign states) around the world. The paper finally explicates why such a reading of the RthRs matters to global politics today and concludes my interpretation of Arendt's concept of the RthRs.

This paper reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s “method” of political thinking and its implicated critiques of the Rawlsian methodology of political philosophy today, namely, the reflective equilibrium. By addressing Arendt’s approach to political thinking and comparing it with John Rawls’ counterpart, I argue that inasmuch as thinking cannot be reduced to philosophising, the outcome of thinking is by no means nothing but philosophy, either. That is to say, in opposition to the analytic method of normative political philosophy ever since Rawls, I contend that reflective equilibrium, as Rawls and some political philosophers proposed, is not the paradigmatic method of thinking on political matters and that political philosophy (or in Rawls’ words the coherent theory) is not the only possible product of political thinking. Based on these points, this paper concludes that Arendt’s approach to political thinking, namely, thinking in plurality and judgmental theory, could provide a trenchant critique of the belief that is held by Rawlsians and most philosophers today. That is, reflective equilibrium and political philosophising are neither adequate for theorising politics nor the best way of thinking about political matters.