Introduction: Hannah Arendt's Legacy at 100 Years of Her Birth

This paper attempts to find the locus of Hannah Arendt's conception of the political and the anti-political. In doing so, the paper identifies Arendt's essential qualifications of the political and the anti-political and attempt to find concrete spaces where we can more or less locate these events. However, this does not mean, as this paper tries to show that these said loci are uncontroversial, incontestable, and an ideal representative of Arendt's articulation of such activities, most especially the political. Despite this, the paper dares to find the spaces whereby the political and the anti-political could possibly be thought to thrive. The space where anti-political resides can be thought easily, whereas, the political is not. In Arendtian sense, the political is elusive and fragile that it can easily be overwhelmed by anti-political activities. The insights are coming mostly from her two major oeuvres namely: The Human Condition and The Origins of Totalitarianism. This paper is divided into two major sections: firstly, an exposition of Arendt's concept of the political explicated in The Human Condition and of anti-political in The Origins of the Totalitarianism and secondly, an attempt to find their loci in our everyday affairs.

Sympathetic readers of Arendt might be surprised by Rancière‟s claim that Arendt‟s political thought, in fact, represses politics in a way paradigmatic of the tradition she sought to escape from. On the contrary, it might appear that rather than offering a rival view of politics, Rancière actually amends and extends an Arendtian conception of politics. I want to caution against such an interpretation. It is true that Arendt is an important influence on Rancière, despite his polemic against her. Arendt's understanding of praxis seems to resonate within Rancière‟s work. However, those apparently Arendtian notions that Rancière make use of are fundamentally transformed when transposed within his broader thematization of dissensus. To develop this argument I first examine Arendt‟s own account of the tension between philosophy and politics in order to understand the phenomenological basis of the political theory that she sought to develop. I then consider how persuasive Rancière‟s characterization of Arendt as an archipolitical thinker is. In the final section, I discuss some key passages in Disagreement in which Rancière alludes to Arendt. These passages highlight how those Arendtian concepts that do seem to find their way into Rancière's thought are transformed when displaced from her ontology.

2010

Revista de ciencia política (Santiago), 2006

Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto the productivity of power: hannah arendt's renewal of the classical concept of politics 125 * translated from German by vanessa lemm.

The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, 2000

Hannah Arendt disavowed the title of “philosopher,” and is known above all as a political theorist. But the relationship between philosophy and politics animates her entire oeuvre. We find her addressing the topic in The Human Condition (1958), in Between Past and Future (a collection of essays written in the early 1960s), and in Men in Dark Times (another collection of essays, this one from the late sixties). It is treated in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, composed during the seventies, and also in the posthumous Life of the Mind, two of three projected volumes of which were complete when she died in 1975. Certainly, Arendt’s thought cannot be understood without taking into account her deep suspicion of and equally deep commitment to philosophy in the context of political reflection. For all that, her writings on this abiding preoccupation do not gel into a systematically articulated theory or programmatic statement. Instead, they reflect Arendt’s appreciation of what remained for her a “vital tension” – an enigma.

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

2010