47 Introduction In this chapter, I challenge the reception of Hannah Arendt and her understanding of political freedom within the “neo-republican” strand of contemporary republican thought. For neo-republicans, of whom Philip Pettit is the leading representative, republicanism should be properly understood as centering on freedom conceived as non- domination or independence from arbitrary interference and power, and not, as some believe, on freedom conceived as participation in self- government. 1 e identification of republicanism with participation in 3 Arendt, Republicanism, and Political Freedom Keith Breen © e Author(s) 2019 K. Hiruta (ed.), Arendt on Freedom, Liberation, and Revolution, Philosophers in Depth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11695-8_3 K. Breen (*) Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK e-mail: k.breen@qub.ac.uk 1 For general discussions of “neo-republicanism” or “civic republicanism,” and its distinctiveness from participatory or so-called “civic humanist” republican theories, see Cécile Laborde and John Maynor, “e Republican Contribution to Contemporary Political eory,” in Republicanism and Political eory, ed. Cécile Laborde and John Maynor (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 1–9; and Frank Lovett, “Republicanism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified 15 April 2014, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/republicanism/.