I Will Be Your Friend: Re-interpretating Hannah Arendt’s Concepts of Political Sentiment and Friendship

This paper investigates Arendt’s concept of political sentiment. One key aim of this paper is to analyse her notions of passion, emotion and sentiment, as well as the relationships between them. I argue that political emotion and sentiment stem from our passion for forming relationships with others, which is facilitated by people coming up with various modes of interaction to sustain these relation- ships. Another aim of this paper is to interpret Arendt’s concept of friendship. I contend that friendship, in her view, refers not just to a duty to one’s friend and the world in-between them (the duty of “forget-me-not”) but also a universal benevolence toward whomever one happens to encounter—to one’s willingness to reach out their hand and say “I will be your friend”.