Who is Hannah Arendt?

The thinker who wrote *The Human Condition* (1958) and *On Revolution* (1963). The book *Plurality* ties one of the meanings of its title word, "plurality", to Arendt, and places her as one of "three thinkers", alongside Danielle Allen and Audrey Tang.

The title of the book, Plurality, is an ordinary English word for being many. Trace where the book took this word from, and you arrive at a single twentieth-century thinker.

In short

Hannah Arendt is the thinker who wrote The Human Condition (1958) and On Revolution (1963). The book Plurality introduces her as a "social philosopher" [1][2].

The book ties one of the meanings of its title word, "plurality", to the plurality that Arendt, in The Human Condition, called the most fundamental element of the human condition [1]. And it places her as one of "three thinkers", alongside Danielle Allen and Audrey Tang [1][3].

Connection to Plurality

The opening of the chapter "What is ⿻?". Chapter 3-0 of the book opens with a passage from The Human Condition [1]:

"Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world."

The Japanese edition adds to this quotation a reference to the existing Japanese translation of The Human Condition by Hayao Shimizu (Chuokoron-sha, 1973) [4].

The "descriptive" one of three meanings. The book divides ⿻ (Plurality) into three components, and associates each with one of three thinkers [1].

Descriptive (how society is) — Arendt
Normative (how it should be) — Allen
Prescriptive (what to do) — Tang

The descriptive meaning assigned to Arendt is this claim: "The social world is neither an unorganized collection of isolated individuals nor a monolithic whole. Instead, it is a fabric of diverse and intersecting affiliations that define both our personal identities and our collective organization." The book says that the character ⿻ captures this component [1]. → Plurality, intersectional identity

The triptych figure. The figure in chapter 3-0 is three overlapping circles. Arendt's circle holds her image, the ⿻ character and the words "Is / Science", and overlaps with Allen's and Tang's circles [1]. In explaining the prescriptive component, too, the book writes that the Taiwanese word "數位" captures "the fusion of the philosophy arising in Arendt and Allen with the transformative potential of digital technology" [1]. → Shuwei and ⿻

Action has an audience. Chapter 4-1 writes that actions, whether at work or play, are usually performed for or in the presence of some audience, and that "this is how Hannah Arendt defines 'action'", as quoted in chapter 3-0 [5]. → Identity and personhood

On Revolution and the path of change. Chapter 6-0, "From ⿻ to Reality", answers the question "What allows for peaceful and beneficial, yet dramatic, progress?" with Arendt's On Revolution [2]. The book's summary runs like this.

The American Revolution grew out of the local democratic experiments of migrants, and had first gained what Arendt calls "authority" (similar to what the book's chapter 4-2 calls legitimacy)
The French Revolution sought to redress dissatisfaction with material conditions immediately by seizing power, long before it had gained authority. As a result, many of its great upheavals were quickly reversed, and were accompanied by violence

The book writes: "The French Revolution demanded, and got, bread; the American demanded, and got, freedom." [2] It then connects this to research indicating that innovation thrives in environments where diverse groups that are internally tightly connected and externally loosely connected interact [2]. → ⿻ theory of change

The book's blurb. The book's blurb says: "⿻, inspired by the ideas of Hannah Arendt, Danielle Allen, and Audrey Tang, views diversity as the fundamental fuel of development that digital technology must harness." [3]

From what the authors have said

Glen Weyl. On a 2019 podcast, Glen Weyl named On Revolution as a book he had recently read and loved. He introduced Arendt's argument that the American Revolution worked because people had first built local democratic communities [6]. It is the same book and the same point as in chapter 6-0. In his 2022 piece "Why I Am a Pluralist", too, he names Arendt among those who influenced him [7].

Audrey Tang. In a conversation with a Yale University delegation on March 13, 2024, Tang explained that "the idea of plurality, which goes back to Hannah Arendt, is the idea that any action done by us is done as people, not as individuals" [8]. In a Japanese-language conversation in April 2024, Tang said that because the Taiwanese Mandarin word "數位" means both "digital" and "plural", the Minister of Digital Affairs is also a minister responsible for plurality, and touched on The Human Condition [9].

How she is read in Japan

Ken Suzuki's commentary. In his commentary on the Japanese edition, Ken Suzuki writes that one of the intellectual origins of Plurality, as the book itself explains, lies in Hannah Arendt's concept of "plurality". He explains that Arendt saw the double character of humans, equal to one another yet each different, as the plural condition of human beings, and made it the foundation of humans being political [10].

Shigeki Uno's review. In a review, Shigeki Uno, a specialist in the history of political thought and political philosophy, named Arendt as the thinker who clearly put forward the idea of "plurality" that gives the book its title. Uno then praised the book as the work of two people who have revived Arendt's idea as a living concept for our time [11].

Hirokazu Nishio's note. Hirokazu Nishio writes that Glen and Audrey's Plurality (technology for collaboration across social difference) has elements of Arendt's plurality, but is not the same thing [12].

A note on translation: the Japanese edition renders plurality as 多元性 [4]. The commentary and the review also use the words 複数性 and 多数性 [10][11].

Main ideas (as far as the book uses them)

This section covers only what the book and those around it have cited.

Plurality. The idea in The Human Condition that the fact that humans live on the earth not as one but as many is the human condition corresponding to "action" [1][10]. It is the pillar of the descriptive component of the book's Plurality.

Authority and revolution. The reading of On Revolution that building authority (legitimacy) before seizing power is the condition for lasting reform. The book uses this in its discussion of the path for spreading ⿻ [2].

Sources

Plurality, 3-0 "What is ⿻?" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 6-0 "From ⿻ to Reality" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/6-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, blurb — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/blob/86158859464aee75633acd854c656928121a7fd8/contents/english/8-blurb.md ［CC0］
PLURALITY, Japanese edition, 3-0 "⿻プルラリティ（多元性）とは？" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-0/jpn/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-1 "Identity and Personhood" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-1/eng/ ［CC0］
80,000 Hours podcast, episode with Glen Weyl (2019-02-08) — https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/glen-weyl-radically-reforming-capitalism-and-democracy/
E. Glen Weyl, "Why I Am a Pluralist" (RadicalxChange, 2022-02-10) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/why-i-am-a-pluralist/
Conversation with Yale University delegation (2024-03-13) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2024-03-13-Conversation-with-Yale-University-delegation.md ［CC0］
"オードリー・タンとの対話#1 創造力こそが私たちの資本" (Dialogue with Audrey Tang #1: creativity is our capital) (distance.media, 2024-04-09, in Japanese) — https://distance.media/article/20240409000196/
Ken Suzuki, commentary on the Japanese edition of PLURALITY (in Japanese) — https://note.com/digitaldemocracy/n/nb8b59a6b775d
Shigeki Uno, "Plurality（プルラリティ）を読み解く①" (Shueisha Shinsho Plus, 2025-07-15, in Japanese) — https://shinsho-plus.shueisha.co.jp/news/31235
Hirokazu Nishio, "ハンナ・アーレントの多元性" (Hannah Arendt's plurality) (Cosense, in Japanese) — https://scrapbox.io/nishio/%E3%83%8F%E3%83%B3%E3%83%8A%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%81%AE%E5%A4%9A%E5%85%83%E6%80%A7

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