JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS, VOL. 3, NO. 1 ( MARCH 2004), 41–53 Journal of Human Rights ISSN 1475-4835 print/ISSN 1475-4843 online © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/1475483042000185215 A meaningful place in the world: Hannah Arendt on the nature of human rights SERENA PAREKH Introduction While the term totalitarianism applies to very specific phenomena – namely, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia – the conditions which made totalitarianism possible are much more diffuse. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism examines the conditions under which totalitarianism was able to come into existence and to flourish. One thing that is clear from her treatment of this topic is that while the actual phenomenon of totalitarianism is over, the conditions which made it possible are still extant. 1 It is with this idea in mind that I would like to turn to Hannah Arendt’s examination of human rights in The Origins of Totalitarianism. According to Arendt, before totalitarianism could destroy people’s lives, it had to first destroy their humanity by taking away their rights; before the Nazis could march the Jews of Europe to the concentration camps and gas chambers, they had to first be made rightless. Yet we know from contemporary politics that the condition of rightlessness is no merely historical problem, but rather is still one of the most pressing problems in inter- national politics. As such, the question of the relationship between human rights and politics that Arendt addresses in The Origins of Totalitarianism is an important one, not merely for our understanding of totalitarianism but also for understanding our own political situation. This paper will proceed as follows. The first section treats the conditions which lead to the creation of stateless people and minorities. The process of becoming stateless, or denationalized, was a necessary pre-condition of totalitarianism because it meant that no nation-state could protect an individual or a group from totalitarian policies. The second section deals with the conflict between the sovereignty of a nation and the rights of an individual. To put the problem roughly, if there is a conflict between the will of the nation (for self-determination, self-protection, self-purification, etc.) and the rights of an individual (to asylum, to citizenship, to legal protection, etc.), the former always, and necessarily, is victorious. This draws out an inherent tension between political structures (like, but not limited to, the nation-state) and human rights. The third section deals with Arendt’s analysis of human rights. Arendt makes a distinction between ‘civic’ rights and a more fundamental kind of rights. Civic rights refer to all those rights which require the protection of a government. Yet more fundamental than these is the ‘right to have rights’, which is the right to a place in the world where meaningful speech and action are possible. Without the capacity for meaningful speech and action, Arendt claims, we are deprived of our humanity and are fundamentally rightless. The fourth part of my paper is devoted to explaining the nature of speech, action, and opinion, such that Arendt can claim that their deprivation entails a loss of humanity. The final part of my paper deals with the question of whether or not rights, in the Arendtian sense, can be guaranteed. This is an interesting problem