Towards The Disappearance Of Politics?

Anthropological Researches and Studies

In The Human Condition (1959), which is mentioned as her opus magnum, Arendt gives a political ontology applying a phenomenological method; she blends the chronological explanation with a conceptual analysis. The axis of thought train is the private-public distinction put in a historical framework. The feminist authors warn us, that this distinction is not a neutral analytical instrument but an abstraction deduced from the reality of the antique patriarchal society. At the same time, Arendt, in other feminist interpretations is a forerunner of feminism who, in her biography written on Rahel Varnhagen, a Jewish woman of Berlin in the first half of the 19 th century, created a role model of modern woman who dared to risk of entering the light of the public realm that had previously been dominated by males and, in her Berlin saloon, offered an alternative space where the women were peers of men. The pro-Arendt feminist interpreters assert, the Arendtian philosophy outlines the possibility for a no male-dominated, really democratic public realm. The political philosophy of Hannah Arendt has been flavored by a history of decline. The beginning of the modernity, in this interpretation, is the moment of derailment. During the centuries of modernity, step by step, the division lines between private and public spheres disappear. Lasting institutions, warranting the public sphere, dissolve in the never-ending procession of material production: everything becomes fluid: culture and politics change into the objects of the everwidening cycles of consumption devouring whole reality and the intimacy, conquering and distorting the emptied public realm, creates proper constellation for totalitarian political practices.

political thinker of enormous erudition full of insights and exceptional originality of the twentieth century. In her writings she appreciates the nature and value of politics as no one has done before, brilliantly analyses the evils of modern civilization and lays the foundation of an ideal community based on participatory democracy. She is of the view that man is a public being who necessarily requires public space in all relevant areas of organized life. To her, the main aim of politics is to develop a new culture based on a public way of life. In her view, politics is concerned not only with the maintenance of order but also with action, the development of character, public freedom, dignity and humanity. She regards Politics as means of self-revelation and public happiness, a cultural activity and an 'aesthetic activity'. The plan of the present study is to discuss, analyse and evaluate Arendt's Tripartite scheme of labour, work and action and her unique conception of politics as "the pursuit of beauty". She regards politics as a means of self-revelation public happiness and an aesthetic activity. Her concept of politics, in fact, has been regarded as "the pursuit of beauty." 1

2017

Santalka, 2009

The aim of this paper is to reconsider Hannah Arendt's most influential works from the point of view of her attitude towards democracy and analysis of the way it may contribute to the contemporary understanding and redefinition of the very notion of what democracy is. The paper begins with the reconstruction of Arendt's anthropology in order to ground her political reflections.

2010

Academia Letters, 2021

The Review of Politics, 1981

Hannah Arendt's last work, The Life of the Mind, was published in 1978 in two volumes entitled, Thinking and Willing.* She planned to write a third volume, "Judging," and in fact had just begun writing it the day she died. Instead of the final book, "Judging," Willing, the second volume of The Life of the Mind, contains excerpts from her lectures on Kant's political philosophy and theory of judgment given at the New School for Social Research in 1970. From these excerpts we can get some idea of Arendt's theory of judgment, although we will never know her final thoughts on this subject since she intended to revise and expand the lectures for the "Judging" volume. Even without the book on judgment, The Life of the Mind remains an altogether fascinating and demanding work, a fitting capstone to a remarkable career. Part of the challenge of this work is due to Arendt's curious and elusive style with which readers of her previous books are already familiar. As in her earlier works, so in The Life of the Mind, she combines complex philosophical argumentation with speculative flights of thought, digressions on all manner of subjects, close textual analysis, and aphoristic declarations, all capped by favorite quotes from writers, poets, and philosophers ranging from Homer to Auden, and from Heraclitus and Plato to Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Sartre. Given the profusion of subject matter and her unique manner of treatment, it is sometimes difficult to follow the main thread of her argument. Yet the book's difficulty should not discourage anyone from reading it. Persevering readers will be richly rewarded. Although The Life of the Mind is a dense work and difficult to read, Arendt very much wanted to be understood not only by scholars, but by the average, nonspecialized reader as well.