Arendt’s Struggle with the Heritage of Radical Conservatism:

Given this ambiguity, it is no wonder that one comes across all kinds of definitions of Arendt’s political stance. One of these is characterizations is “radical conservative”, the title of a recent book by the late Irving Horowitz. And indeed, there are interesting and significant overlaps in Arendt’s thought with conservative thinking. As Margaret Canovan has also argued, despite Arendt’s prevailing contemporary reception being strongly bent towards a ‘radical’ reading of her thought, “earlier suspicions of her conservatism were not just expressions of Marxists prejudice. Interwoven with the radical elements in her thought are strands that are indeed deeply conservative“. For