In a paper titled: Sensitive to Shame: Hannah Arendt on Becoming Worldly Manu Samnotra writes: 'The central concern shaping Arendt’s arguments is man’s alienation from the world. Although she provides powerful distinctions between the various modes of vita activa as antidotes to the decay of the public world, to the degree that the recovery of the public/political space can help us ward off the anti-political temptations of modernity – that is, overcome the hubris of modern society – a relationship to shame as a guarantee against hubris would certainly have to be part of any solution...Politics – that is, the fact of plurality – deprives the actions of an actor of their sovereign intentions by refracting them from a multiplicity of interpretive perspectives. Arendt highlights this transformation of sovereign design into non-sovereign action by referring to action as both doing and suffering'. Why suffering?

ChatGPT said:

Because, tragically for anyone who enjoys being fully in control (so… everyone), action in Arendt’s sense is not a solo performance. It’s improv theatre with a hostile audience who also get to rewrite the script after you leave the stage.

Here’s the boring-but-true answer, with a little emotional support for your patience.

For Arendt, action happens in a world of others. The moment you act, your deed escapes your intentions and enters a space of plurality, where it is interpreted, responded to, misinterpreted, amplified, resisted, or weaponized by people who did not ask for your permission. This is why action is doing and suffering.

• Doing: you initiate something. You begin. You disclose yourself.

• Suffering (pathein): you are acted upon in return. You undergo consequences you did not design, cannot control, and may not even recognize as “yours” anymore.

In other words, once you act politically, you stop being the author and become a character in a story other people are telling. Congratulations—you’ve lost sovereignty.

This is exactly what Arendt is pushing against the modern fantasy of:

• total control,

• mastery,

• technical problem-solving,

• and the idea that intention = outcome.

Politics ruins that fantasy. Public life humiliates it. Which is why shame matters.

Why suffering specifically?

Because to act is to expose yourself. Exposure means vulnerability. Vulnerability means the possibility of:

• misunderstanding,

• judgment,

• failure,

• unintended harm,

• being implicated in outcomes you never wanted.

That experience—being undone by the presence of others—is what Arendt means by suffering. Not melodrama. Not martyrdom. Just the unavoidable passivity that accompanies initiative.

How this connects to shame and hubris

Hubris is the belief that you are:

• sovereign,

• self-sufficient,

• above the judgment of others,

• entitled to mastery over outcomes.

But action-as-suffering constantly reminds you that you are not in charge. Shame enters here as a moral-emotional signal that:

• you are visible,

• you are fallible,

• you are implicated in a shared world you do not own.

So shame, for Arendt (and for Samnotra’s reading), isn’t a pathology—it’s a worldly emotion. It anchors you in plurality. It punctures fantasies of domination. It keeps politics political instead of turning it into administration, violence, or ideology.

Short version (since you didn’t ask for a dissertation, but you got one anyway):

Action is suffering because politics happens between people, not inside your head. The world talks back. Often rudely. And if that makes you uncomfortable—good. That discomfort is doing important civic work.

If politics ever stops making people feel exposed, ashamed, or unsettled, Arendt would say it’s already dead.