The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James, Humanism Arendt and Totalitarianism" Season 17 Episode 9

Both Montesquieu and Hannah Orent claim that the law has an essentially negative function—it tells you what you ought not to do, but not what you ought to do Kant's categorical imperative in the realm of ethics, on the other hand, focuses on what we ought to do.

Governments in turn are defined by a principle of action defining what is valued in the sphere of the public space that political acts occur in, a space with both ethical and political characteristics.

Montesquieu in his Political Reflections, considered monarchies, republics, and tyrannies which appeared to be the only alternatives available during the 1800s.

Arendt's principle of action, complements these reflections by defining ultimate values for a particular people-government.

Monarchies, Montesquieu argued, value honor, republics value virtue, and tyrannies value fear.

Hannah Arendt takes up this thread in order to analyze totalitarian forms of government which according to her are an original and unique form of government that emerged during the last century.

and manifested itself most clearly in the Nazi and Stalinist regimes in Germany and Russia.

Now on Montesquieu's analysis, we probably would have to characterize these latter regimes in terms of the characteristics of tyranny, and these seem not to do justice to the worldwide consequences we experienced at the hands of totalitarian regimes.

Tyrannies, for example, were destined to destroy themselves from within, in a relatively short period of time, and the activity we witness in such regimes have an interesting relation to principles of instrumental action, instantiated in particular by citizens acting out of a sense of political fear.

Citizens of these kinds of regimes do not criticize government for fear of their lives.

Otherwise they were actually allowed to exercise their freedom in the available political space.