There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the fundamental difference between civil disobedience and criminal acts, emphasizing the morality behind public defiance versus hidden wrongdoing.
Hannah Arendt's quote draws a clear line between actions taken in open defiance of the law for moral reasons, known as civil disobedience, and actions taken in secrecy by criminals. She argues that the clear distinction between these two forms of consequences can only be overlooked by those who are biased or unwilling to acknowledge the moral imperatives behind civil disobedience.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethics of protesting against unjust laws.
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses its quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which must remain hidden if it is not to lose its depth in a very real, non-subjective sense.
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world.
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.
Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
It is the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings.
I think that communism was a major force for violence for more than 100 years, because it was built into its ideology - that progress comes through class struggle, often violent.
All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.
When you inhale, you are taking the strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world.
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
Rush, that most exciting perversion of life, the necessity of accomplishing something in less time than should be truly allowed for its doing.
Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.
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