Abstract
Hannah Arendt is not one of the more frequently cited names in today’s dignity discourse, despite having made an early contribution to the debate popularized (McCrudden 2008) by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In her book, On the Origins of Totalitarianism, written around the time of the declaration and when many were experiencing rightlessness, superfluousness, and statelessness, she devotes a chapter to “the perplexities of the rights of man,” in which she formulates her view of the “right to have rights.” In her foreword, she states that “human dignity needs a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political principle, in a new law on earth” (OT, p. ix).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
As an organizing principle close to the “logic of appropriateness” (March and Olsen 2006) with emphasis on the personal element and freedom.
- 4.
I do not wish to diminish, but rather to complement this action perspective, most thoroughly elaborated by Vino. Hicks’ (2011) experiences of conflict management, where personal storytelling of experiences of dignity breaches opened spaces for communication, and thereby action, can also be read as illuminating Arendt’s view of storytelling as a way to restore dignity to the past and to all the actors and sufferers in the story.
- 5.
I do not sympathize with readings which project a hierarchy between Arendtian activities. Kateb (2007) equates his own hierarchical concept of human status and stature with her existential “values.” Sennett (2009), more influential in organization theory than Arendt and in a tone similar to Kateb, accuses her of lacking respect for the working man.
References
Works by Hannah Arendt Are Referred to by Abbreviations
BPF. 1961. Between Past and Future. New York: Viking Press.
OR. 1973a. On Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
OT. 1973b. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt.
LM. 1978. The Life of the Mind: Part One/Thinking. New York: Harcourt.
HA. 1979. On Hannah Arendt. In Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, ed. M. Hill. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
LKPP. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. R. Beiner. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
EJ. 1974. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books.
EU. 1994. Essays in Understanding 1930–1954. New York: Schocken Books.
HC. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
KMT. 2002. Karl Marx and the Tradition of Western Political Thought. Social Research 69(2): 273–319.
PP—Arendt, H. 2005. The Promise of Politics. New York: Schocken Books.
Barnouw, D. 1990. Visible Spaces: Hannah Arendt and the German-Jewish Experience. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Birmingham, P. 2006. Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Borren, M. 2010. Amor Mundi: Hannah Arendt’s Political Phenomenology of World. Diss., Netherlands: University of Amsterdam.
Canovan, M. 1992. Hannah Arendt. A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Feldman, S.P. 2002. Memory as a Moral Decision: The Role of Ethics in Organizational Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Ferrara, A. 2008. The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment. New York: Columbia University Press.
Fleming, P., and A. Spicer. 2007. Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistance in Organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Henning, G.K. 2011. Corporation and the Polis. Journal of Business Ethics 103: 289–303.
Hicks, Donna. 2011. Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hodson, R. 2004. Dignity at Work. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ingram, J.D. 2008. What Is a ‘Right to Have Rights’? Three Images of the Politics of Human Rights. American Political Science Review 102(4): 401–416.
Kateb, G. 2007. Existential Values in Arendt’s Treatment of Evil and Morality. Social Research 74(3): 811–854.
Kesby, A. 2012. The Right to Have Rights: Citizenship, Humanity, and International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lacroix, J. 2015. The “Right to Have Rights” in French Political Philosophy: Conceptualising a Cosmopolitan Citizenship with Arendt. Constellations 22(1): 79–90.
March, J.G., and J.P. Olsen. 2006. The Logic of Appropriateness. In Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, eds. M. Moran, M. Rein, and R.E. Goodin. New York: Oxford University Press.
McCrudden, C. 2008. Human. Dignity and Judicial Interpretations of Human Rights European Journal of International Law 19(4): 655–724.
Menke, C. 2007. The “Aporias of Human Rights” and the “One Human Right”: Regarding the Coherence of Hannah Arendt’s Argument. Social Research 74(3): 739–762.
Nielsen, R.P. 2014. Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). In The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies, eds. J. Helin, T. Hernes, D. Hjorth, and R. Holt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 1984. Arendt’s Action Philosophy and the Manager as Eichmann, Richard III, Faust, or Institution Citizen. California Management Review 26(3): 191–201.
Parekh, Serena. 2008. Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity: A Phenomenology of Human Rights. New York: Routledge.
Pirson, M., and C. Dierksmeier. 2014. Reconnecting Management Theory and Social Welfare: A Humanistic Perspective. Humanistic Management Network (Research Paper No. 13).
Rosen, M. 2012. Dignity—Its History and Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sennett, R. 2009. The Craftsman. London: Penguin.
Schaap, A. 2011. Enacting the Right to Have Rights: Jacques Rancière’s Critique of Hannah Arendt. European Journal of Political Theory 10(1): 22–45.
Spoelstra, S. 2007. What is Organization? Lund: Lund Business Press.
——— 2010. Business Miracles. Culture and Organization 16(1): 87–101.
Vino, A. 1996. Telling Stories, Reflecting, Learning: Hannah Arendt and Organization. Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies 2(2): 309–325.
Virno, P. 2004. A Grammar of the Multitude. New York: Semiotext(e).
Waldron, J. 2006. Arendt’s Constitutional Politics. In The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, ed. D. Villa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Young-Bruehl, E. 1982. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ingman, S. (2017). Dignity in Organizing from the Perspective of Hannah Arendt’s Worldliness. In: Kostera, M., Pirson, M. (eds) Dignity and the Organization. Humanism in Business Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55562-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55562-5_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55561-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55562-5
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)