166 Chapter 8 Disobedience Subjectively Speaking Elena Loizidou Hannah Arendt in her essay ‘Civil Disobedience’ (1972)- a version was published originally in the popular magazine The New Yorker on the 12 September 1970 1 - dismisses whole- heartily the subjective element of disobedient actions. Why? Arendt observes that most often subjective based explanations of civil disobedience utilise the faculty of conscience as means of articulating the reasons for breaching the law and voicing dissent for unjust law. Conscience based explanations she argues are bereft of politics and serve individualistic interest. It is for these two reasons that Arendt rejects subjective civil disobedience. At the heart of Arendt’s rejection of subjective disobedience, of ‘…kee[ping] civil disobedience form being a philosophy of subjectivity…’ (Arendt 1972:57) lays her influential understanding of politics-explicated in 1958 in The Human Condition (1988-as the coming together of people to deliberate upon common matters and create in this manner a common world as well as, her faith in the institution of law. This chapter will focus in explaining firstly how Arendt’s understanding of civil disobedience- as the rise of a plurality (whose acts may are legally contestable) when their demands are no longer heard or acted upon by the formal constitutional channels (government, courts)- is subjugated to her own articulation of politics (Arendt 1972:74) 2 . I will then explain how in turn her understanding of the qualities of formal law (formal law is presented as just and objective) by precisely not being put under the microscope enables her to argue for the rehabilitation of civil disobedience within the parameters of institutional law.