| Summary: | Hannah Arendt is regularly acknowledged as one of the most influential political theorists of the Twentieth Century and her concept of action is arguably her largest contribution. By acting we appear to one another as equals, introduce spontaneity into the world, and attempt to create something common and permanent. Yet as intrinsically appealing as 'action' sounds in Arendt's notion of the public, the precise ways in which we act and the ends that we act toward remain vague and ill-defined in her theory. The predominant response to Arendt on action is to turn to her treatment of the Greek world---but these analyses leave us with a vision of action as eruptive, unpredictable, and destabilizing. This interpretation of action does not square well with the rest of Arendt's thought---particularly her emphases on the need for predictability if human affairs are to flourish, and the role that thinking plays as a precursor to action.
Unlike the Arendt's Greek examples, her treatment of Rome provides a way out of this disjunction between action, stability in the world, and thinking. The Roman influence in Arendt's thought is vastly overlooked, but necessary for a holistic understanding of her project. Accordingly, this dissertation has a two-pronged aim: 1) to comprehensively detail Arendt's connection to and use of the Roman world in her body of work, and 2) to demonstrate how her analysis of Cicero in particular can illuminate dimensions otherwise obscured in her theory. An analysis of Arendt on Cicero will fill out the nature of the relationship between thinking and acting, as well as highlight the motivating principles that animate our actions in the world. I argue that Cicero's emphasis on fellowship---and the principles for action that accompany it---is strikingly similar to Arendt's understanding of solidarity. A pairing of the two provides new insights on the 'why' and 'what' of thinking and acting in Arendt's theory of the public.
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