JUSTICE: On Relating Private and Public

Private and public, it is important to realize, are relative terms. First, something may be public in the sense that it is accessible to all, open to scrutiny by anyone, visible as a focus of attention. Second, something may be public in the sense that it affects all or most of us, public in its consequences and significance. “Society” has “invaded” and “conquered the public realm,” but there is a significant ambiguity about just what this victory means. As long as the animal laborans remains in possession of it there can be no true public realm, but only private activities displayed in the open. In On Revolution, Arendt is franker about the meaning of society’s intrusion on the public, allowing that “the social question” might be spoken of “better and more simply” as “the existence of poverty.” The idea of justice, central for Aristotle, is conspicuously absent from Arendt’s otherwise closely parallel account.