Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt’s work is an important reference for Paul Ricœur. Her definition of power as the free action in concert of individuals within a community of equals, guaranteed by institutions, allows Ricœur to ground his reflection on the political dimension of recognition and justice. However, as I will show in this paper, such a definition is problematic, particularly because of the relation that Arendt establishes between power and authority, her decision to separate the social and the political, and her understanding (...) of ideology, philosophy, and common sense in politics. After describing Arendt’s account of the relation between power and authority, I argue that, without rejecting the spirit of her political thought or her basic concepts, Ricœur’s reflections on the functions of ideology in his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia offer a broader but complementary vision that allows us to understand the issues that remain obscure in Arendt’s approach. -/- Résumé: L’œuvre de Hannah Arendt constitue une référence importante pour Paul Ricœur. La définition arendtienne du pouvoir comme agir ensemble des individus au sein d’une communauté d’égaux garantie par des institutions, fournit en effet à Ricœur les bases de sa réflexion sur la dimension politique de la reconnaissance et de la justice. Cependant, cet article s’efforce de montrer qu’une telle définition est problématique, non seulement en raison de la relation qu’Arendt établit entre le pouvoir et l’autorité, mais aussi en ce qui concerne sa distinction du social et du politique, sa compréhension de l’idéologie, ainsi que sa conception de la philosophie et du sens commun dans le domaine politique. Après une analyse des thèses d’Arendt sur la relation entre le pouvoir et l’autorité, cet article soutient que, sans rejeter l’esprit de la pensée politique arendtienne et ses concepts de base, la conception ricœurienne des fonctions de l’idéologie développée dans L’idéologie et l’utopie offre une vision plus ample et plus complète qui permet d’éclairer les questions qui demeurent obscures dans l’approche de Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt aims to secure a more adequate understanding of the new crime of genocide so that it can be prosecuted in a manner that better serves justice. She criticizes the Nuremberg Trials and, to a lesser extent, the Jerusalem trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann for miscasting this unprecedented crime in terms of familiar concepts and thereby obscuring it. Arendt claims that this atrocity, instead, demanded original thinking (...) that emanated from a closer grappling with these new experiences. I argue that her criticism reflects Heideggerian phenomenology. This approach questions absolute concepts from a position more consciously planted in the world, which Heidegger considers the source of original thinking. However, Arendt extends this approach to the domain of ethics and law and confronts genocide instead of aligning with those who perpetrated it. (shrink)

The contemporary concept of place rests on a paradox: in order to move seamlessly within and between places (real and virtual), one must possess a secure—primarily, legal and economic—connection to a place. Without this secure connection, being-in-the-world means being displaced. By drawing on examples in literature, anthropology, and the testimonies of displaced persons, this chapter illustrates that an over-insistence on the ontological primordiality of place potentially aligns phenomenology with the exclusionary dimension of place in the globalized 21st century. In response, (...) I construct a critical phenomenology of forced displacement that is at once critical of the phenomenology of place, but also views phenomenology as critical to overcoming the contemporary paradox of place. (shrink)

This article turns to early modern and Enlightenment advocates of tolerance in order to discover and lay bare the line of argument that informed their commitment to free speech. This line of argument will subsequently be used to assess the shift from free speech to the contemporary ideal of free self-expression. In order to take this assessment one step further, this article will finally turn to Immanuel Kant’s famous defense of the public use of reason. In the wake of Katerina (...) Deligiorgi’s readings of Kant, it will show that the idea of free speech requires a specific disposition on behalf of speakers and writers that is in danger of being neglected in the contemporary prevailing conception of free speech as freedom of self-expression. (shrink)

Dementia will soon be ranked as the world’s largest economy. At present, it ranges from the 16th to 18th place, with countries such as Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Dementia is not only a financial challenge, but also a philosophical one. It provokes a paradigm shift in the traditional view of healthcare and expands the classic concepts of human personhood and autonomy. A promising response to these challenges is the idea of cooperative solidarity. Cooperative solidarity, contrary to its ‘humanitarian’ version, (...) promotes spontaneous teamwork and individual initiative. It obliges us not only to help 'the suffering, the troubled and the disadvantaged’, but above all to support those who already do so for spontaneous moral or affective reasons. In the field of dementia study, solidary initiatives are described within the framework of supportive care. (shrink)

Kirjasymposioartikkeli esittelee Hanna Meretojan teoksen The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible (Oxford University Press, 2018) keskeisimmät ajatukset ja kytkee ne laajempaan hermeneuttiseen ja jälkistrukturalistiseen ajatteluperinteeseen, etenkin Jean-François Lyotardin luonnehdintaan jälkimodernista aikakaudesta suurten modernien historiallisten metakertomusten horjumisen ja pienten paikallisten kertomusten moneuden aikakautena. Tässä valossa Meretojan hermeneuttista kertomusetiikkaa voidaan lukea ennen muuta pienten, ei-totalisoivien kertomusten etiikkana. Artikkeli esittää, että tällaiselle etiikalle löytyy hedelmällinen vertailukohta Hannah Arendtin totalitarismiteoriasta, joka sijoittaa ideologiset metakertomukset totalitaarisen hallinnan ja sen tuottaman ”banaalin pahuuden” (...) ytimeen; niin Arendtin kuin Meretojankin kertomusetiikan keskeisenä viitekohtana on holokausti moderniteetin eettisenä nollapisteenä. Nämä yhteydet tuovat esiin Meretojan hahmotteleman hermeneuttisen etiikan laajan teoreettisen kaikupohjan myöhäismodernissa ajatteluperinteessä. Lopuksi pohditaan kysymystä hermeneuttisen pienten kertomusten etiikan jatkuvasta ajankohtaisuudesta sosiaalisen median ja sen ”kuplien” aikakaudella. (shrink)

Political action is unpredictable because it unfolds among a plurality of independent actors. This unpredictability generates a fundamental puzzle: If an actor cannot know where her initiative will lead, what motivates and guides her in her doings? The aim of this paper is to develop and defend the solution to the puzzle that we can find in the thought of Hannah Arendt, namely the idea that political action is – or should be – motivated and guided by principles, principles like (...) justice, equality, or honour. Such principles must be distinguished from goals because they do not designate a specific state of affairs, but are general ideas that allow for diverse implementations. I show that this distinction is of great practical importance for the actors involved, since their outlook and their attitude towards others will differ depending on whether they see their activity as aimed at a goal or as guided by a principle. (shrink)

By reference to the Aristotelian meditation, this essay undertakes to articulate an understanding of phronesis and sophia, praxis and theoria, in their belonging together. In so doing, it strives to overcome the traditional opposition of these terms, an opposition preserved even by those thinkers, such as Gadamer and Arendt, who have emphasized the practical over against the theoretical simply by inverting the order of the hierarchy.What is at stake, ultimately, is thinking ethics as first philosophy, i.e., seeing the philosophical articulation (...) of scientific knowledge, even of ontology, as resting on (belonging in) living-in-action, as phenomenologically, phenomenally, sensibly grounded. Of course, “ethics as first philosophy” here can mean neither a normative-prescriptive compilation nor a self-founding, autonomous discourse. Rather, the phrase names the comprehensiveness of ethics vis-à-vis all mannerof human endeavor and the openness of ethics vis-à-vis that which exceeds it, that which is irreducible to discourse and in which the ethical discourse belongs. (shrink)

That Oakeshott and Arendt's political works contain Augustinian references is well known. What historians of political thought have had difficulty in is assessing the consistency and importance of the Augustinian themes within their work. It transpires that the traces of existentialism and personalism in Augustine are amplified and clarified by their use in Oakeshott and Arendt, to the extent that they form an important subtext to their work. One stumbling block for scholars attempting to link the ?mature? works of Oakeshott (...) and Arendt to Augustine has been a sense of disparity between the eschatological character of Augustine's writings and the civic worldliness of Oakeshott's associations and Arendt's public realm. Returning to several strands of twentieth-century Augustinianism, from the personalist to the existentialist to the liberal, reveals an Augustinianism that is much more credibly linked to the whole of Oakeshott and Arendt's writings. (shrink)

Discussione a partire dal libro di Giorgio Agamben "Karman. Breve trattato sull'azione, la colpa e il gesto", Bollati Boringhieri, 2017.

A philosophical investigation of dealing with guilt and its impact on democracy. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno, this book illustrates the relevance and applicability of a political discussion of guilt and democracy. It appropriates psychoanalytic theory to analyse court documents of Austrian Nazi perpetrators as well as recent public controversies surrounding Austria’s involvement in the Nazi atrocities and ponders how the former agents of Hitlerite crimes and contemporary Austrians have dealt with their guilt. Exposing (...) the defensive mechanisms that have been used to evade facing involvement in Nazi atrocities, Leeb considers the possibilities of breaking the cycle of negative consequences that result from the inability to deal with guilt. Leeb shows us that only by guilt can individuals and nations take responsibility for their past crimes, show solidarity with the victims of crimes, and prevent the emergence of new crimes. (shrink)

In this article I draw on Theodor W. Adorno and Hannah Arendt to defend an account of judgment that I term embodied reflective judgment, which implies that thinking and feeling are interconnected and both are crucial for critical judgment. However, when I say that both thinking and feeling are important for reflective judgment, I do not mean to imply that they are separate and distinct entities. Rather, the idea of reflective judgment is based on the insight that thinking and feeling (...) are not only connected, but entangled with each other. The way in which we think about something can prompt an emotional response, and that response can prompt further reflection necessary for critical judgment. In this article I clarify the relationship between thinking and feeling by foregrounding guilt feelings as a specific issue that individuals and political collectivities must deal with to make embodied reflective judgment a possibility. -/- . (shrink)

Através da leitura que Heidegger faz de Aletheia, Arendt vincula a noção de verdade à de aparência ao custo de desmantelar a conhecida dicotomia entre o ser verdadeiro e a mera aparência, deslocando a verdade do domínio dos noumena ao dos phenomena enquanto reino da visibilidade, o domínio doxástico da ação política. Doxa como desvelamento não mais nos conduz à adequação cognitiva do self interno, mas antes à dimensão arendtiana cognitiva interpessoal de seres humanos no mundo: quem nós somos no (...) espaço público. Será mostrado que não há nenhuma contradição entre dialética e persuasão, na medida em que Arendt desloca o registro positivo da doxa em direção a suas considerações sobre a faculdade de julgar, reforçando a primazia da comunicabilidade, pluralidade e diversidade de pontos de vista na construção da doxa quando alguém constitui sua visão particular e única no mundo. Finalmente, mostrar-se-á que a amizade deve ser tomada como o tipo de insight político por excelência, enquanto praxis de ver o mundo a partir da perspectiva do outro. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Amizade espaço público. Comunicabilidade. Doxa, praxis. ABSTRACT Through Heidegger’s reading of Aletheia, Arendt links the notion of truth to appearance at the expense of dismantling the well-known dichotomy between true being and mere appearance, displacing truth from the domain of noumena to the realm of phenomena which is the realm of visibility, the doxastic domain of political action. Doxa as uncovering no longer leads to the cognitive adequation of the inner self, but rather to Arendt’s main interpersonal dimension of men into the appearing world: who we are in the public space. Thus, it will be asserted that there is by no means sheer contradiction between the dialectics and persuasion. It will also be claimed that Arendt displaces the positive account of doxa toward her considerations on the faculty of judging, reinforcing the primacy of communicability, plurality and diversity of viewpoints in building up someone’s doxa, in how one constitutes ones particular view and uniqueness, into the world. Finally, friendship is claimed to hold the political kind of insight par excellence, as the praxis of seeing the world from the other’s viewpoint. KEY WORDS – Communicability. Doxa. Friendship. Praxis. Public space. (shrink)

This thesis argues that states have cosmopolitan obligations of a moral-legal character. These obligations are articulated as “cosmopolitan law”, which is a Kantian term referring to the morallegal norms that regulate the relation between states and foreigners. The main example of cosmopolitan law today is found in the right to asylum. In the first part, I argue that the globalized circumstances actualize the need for an extension of this law and therefore I consider some of the main contributors to the (...) extension of cosmopolitan law, namely Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt and Seyla Benhabib. I also situate this Kantian account in the immigration debate and conclude that I prefer Benhabib’s position compared to other positions in the current discussion. In the second part, I take some distance from Benhabib’s reading of Arendt and seek to explore an alternative reading informed by a Husserlian phenomenological perspective. I tend to agree with a more radical reading of Arendt, which seeks to balance the institutionalist and performative aspects of her thinking. My reading is grounded in a systematic conceptual analysis of Arendt’s more theoretical perspectives that are found in The Human Condition, in central chapters of The Origins, and in some of her essays. My main point is to show how central the significance of the co-presence of others is to her thinking. Through a phenomenological reading, the richest experiential mode of this co-presence – as “fully human” – is taken to be the basic experience that motivates Arendt’s typology of modes of activities and her normative ranking of principles of action. Further, informed by Alfred Schutz’s conceptual framework of social relations, I discuss in more detail what this experience of the “fully human” could entail. I argue that this mode of experience has normative implications both on the face-to-face level of interaction, and on the level of indirect interaction among strangers. The main implication of this reading is that Arendt’s contribution should not be understood – as Benhabib seems to suggest – only as an extension of the content of cosmopolitan law within the Kantian framework. Decisively, Arendt’s thinking should be considered as a reconceptualization of the guiding principles of political thought and a new concept of human dignity. I argue that this reconceptualization allows for an extension of cosmopolitan law more adequately adapted to the circumstances of our times than the Kantian framework. (shrink)

There has been much recent debate concerning how Hannah Arendt's concepts of radical evil and the banality of evil `fit together', if at all. I argue that the first of these concepts deals with a certain type of evil, in particular the evil that occurred in the Nazi death camps. The second deals with a certain type of perpetrator of evil, in particular the banal `nobody', Eichmann. As such, bar a localized incompatibility in regard to Arendt's early account of the (...) motivation of perpetrators of radical evil, these two concepts are independent but nonetheless highly complementary. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • banality of evil • Adolf Eichmann • evil • forgiveness • Immanuel Kant • punishment • radical evil. (shrink)

It has often been argued that Hannah Arendt ‘let off’ Eichmann through her concept of the banality of evil. In this paper I argue, through revisiting and modifying the concept of the banality of evil, that we can reject such criticism. That is, by judging that a perpetrator, like Eichmann, commits evil banally in no way undermines the grounds for holding them to be responsible for their actions, but it does help us to understand why such perpetrators act as they (...) do and to teach us how we might prevent such evil from occurring again. (shrink)

Arendt claims that our natality (i.e., our condition of being born) is the “source” or “root” of our capacity to begin (i.e., of our capacity to initiate something new). But she does not fully explain this claim. How does the capacity to begin derive from the condition of birth? That Arendt does not immediately and unambiguously provide an answer to this question can be seen in the fact that her notion of natality has received very different interpretations. In the present (...) paper, I seek to clarify the notion. I bring together and examine Arendt’s scattered remarks about natality and propose a new interpretation that responds to the stated question. Along the way, I show how the various existing interpretations have arisen and argue that, in view of that question, they are inadequate. (shrink)

Translator's Abstract: The right to have rights was never a right to be had. Hannah Arendt's famous formulation of the most elementary right of all, the right to participate in the definition of rights, is not a description of a given right that belongs to one or the other form of law, but an indictment of a deficit in the construction of legality on the basis of the right to withdraw legal protection from members of a community, and therefore to (...) refuse rights. The one and only human right thus turns out to be ungrounded in anything but the idea of its being had: a " property right " that traces back to the legal, philosophical and linguistic definitions of " one's own " since antiquity. Only the gift of the incalculable and of that which cannot possibly be legitimated can ground the autarchic self-relation of having: ungrounded in the rationally organized nature of any given, possessing the right to membership in a political community turns out to be permission to freely transfer this possession to another, without expectation of a return. (shrink)

In her 1971 essay “Lying in Politics,” Hannah Arendt reflects on the publication of top-secret materials contained in a massive study entitled “History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy,” a.k.a. the Pentagon Papers. As the title of her essay suggests, Arendt is concerned with the problem of political deception. However, it is not the lies that politicians may or may not tell that form the central theme of her essay. Instead, she focuses on what the Pentagon Papers tell us (...) about the role of ideological thinking and self-deception in the development of U.S. policy bearing on Vietnam. In particular,…. (shrink)

Important scholars are used to emphasizing the dialogue between Arendt and Heidegger when seeking sources of Arendtian political thinking. Without rejecting the relevance of Heidegger, the central idea behind my interpretation is that Arendt asks and answers the fundamental question of her political philosophy by establishing a dialogue, above all, with Marx. This article aims at highlighting the fact that it is by refusing the theory of classes and its unraveling in the Marxist utopia that she created the notion of (...) “natality”, on which she bases human plurality. And that it is by refuting the definition of man as animal laborans that she finds man’s specificity in his capacity for action and communication. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In Die Frage nach dem Ding, Martin Heidegger characterizes Galileo as an important transitional figure in the struggle to replace the Aristotelian conception of nature with that of Newton. However, Heidegger only attends to Galileo’s modernity and not to those Aristotelian elements still discernible in Galileo’s work. This article fleshes out both aspects in Galileo in light of Heidegger’s discussion. It concludes by arguing that the lacuna in Heidegger’s account of Galileo is the consequence of Heidegger’s own self-conscious modernity (...) − a modernity that he slyly hints at in a remark he makes in FD concerning Galileo and Democritus.RÉSUMÉ : Dans Die Frage nach dem Ding, Martin Heidegger qualifie Galilée de figure importante dans la lutte pour remplacer la conception aristotélicienne de la nature par celle de Newton. Toutefois, Heidegger examine seulement les traits modernes de Galilée et non ceux qui ressemblent à Aristote. Cet article précise ces deux aspects à partir de la discussion dans Die Frage nach dem Ding. Il conclut par l’affirmation que la lacune dans le portrait de Galilée est la conséquence de la modernité consciente de Heidegger lui-même — une modernité à laquelle il fait allusion dans une remarque concernant Galilée et Démocrite. (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo occupies the relatively rare position of being both a prominent philosopher and an engaged politician. This article outlines Vattimo’s philosophy of “weak thought” and his democratic socialist politics, and argues that there is a “gap” between them: his stated political positions seem at odds with aspects of his philosophy. This gap between the phi- losophical and the political is examined with reference to the topic of globalised capitalism. I then apply Vattimo’s own strategy in reading other philosophers to (...) his thought, attempt- ing to draw out the possible political implications of weak thought against his own stated position. I do this through the application of one of Vattimo’s central concepts, Verwindung (―twisting-free‖), to globalised capitalism. I conclude with some reflections on the prospects for a politics of weak thought. (shrink)

Some feminists have argued that the “master's tools” cannot be utilized for feminist projects. When read through the lens of non-ideal theory, Judith Butler's reevaluation of “autonomy” and “universality” and Peaches's engagement with guitar rock are instances in which implements of patriarchy are productively repurposed for feminist ends. These examples evince two criteria whereby one can judge the success of such an attempt: first, accessibility and efficacy; second, that the use is deconstructive of its own conditions.

Essay review of Andrew Feenberg, Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (Routledge, 2005).

Hogescholen zijn dienstbaar aan de samenleving, zo valt te lezen in de strategische onderwijsagenda van het hoger beroepsonderwijs. Maar wat houdt deze publieke functie precies in? Het gedachtegoed van politiek denker Hannah Arendt biedt docenten en beleidsmakers ten minste drie handelingsperspectieven. De auteur illustreert deze drie perspectieven met voorbeelden uit de onderwijspraktijk.

The present volume is the latest example of what scholars of Japanese philosophy have been up to in recent years. The papers collected here, most of them presented at conferences held in Barcelona and Nagoya during 2016, have been arranged in four thematic parts. The first two parts cover the history of Japanese philosophy, as their topics extend from premodern thinkers to twentieth century philosophers; the last two parts focus on Nishida and Watsuji respectively.

Neste artigo, tivemos o objetivo de analisar como o racionalismo ético limita a ética. Frente a este propósito, expomos a fonte trágica da ética de Aristóteles, para quem a ética não é ciência e não tem uma fonte metafísica. A revelação de Aristóteles mostrou como o seu pensamento ético, por ultrapassar o racionalismo filosófico, inaugura uma corrente de pensamento moral cuja modéstia é mais adequada à fragilidade da condição humana.

In her article, "Thinking and Moral Considerations," Hannah Arendt provides a provocative approach to the question of evil by suggesting that banal evil-the most common kind-may arise directly from thoughtlessness. If that is so, thinking may provide an antidote to evil. Learning to think would then offer the individual and society protection against the dangers of thoughtless evil. She further suggests that thinking may clear the way for a form of judging that "when the chips are down" may turn people (...) toward right rather than wrong, beauty rather than ugliness. In this essay I address her claim by noting an example of apparently thoughtless evil, the murder of Duncan by Macbeth, and by showing how this event clarifies Arendt's thesis, including both its weaknesses and its strengths. The use of Macbeth will amount to a sketch of certain features of the play particularly relevant to this ethical issue, followed by an analysis of ways Arendt's thesis connects with the murder of Duncan. (shrink)

Der Beitrag geht der These Hannah Arendts nach, dass es nur ein einziges wahres Menschenrecht gebe: das Recht auf Rechte. Er zeichnet zunächst (I) Arendts pragmatische und begründungstheoretische Kritik der Menschenrechte nach, um (II) in einem zweiten Schritt zu untersuchen, inwiefern das von Arendt bezeichnete „Recht auf Rechte“ unsere Berechtigung zugleich politisiert und naturalisiert. Der Beitrag schließt (III) mit der doppelten Frage, inwiefern das von Arendt beschriebene Menschenrecht selbst rechtlich institutionalisierbar ist und inwieweit es über die Form subjektiver Rechte hinausweist.

In recent European philosophy, and especially in Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, and Badiou, the distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary, or between normality and “event,” has played a very prominent role. In the present paper, I raise a challenge to this distinction, a challenge inspired by Deleuze’s conception of repetition and difference. Is it not the case that every occurrence in some ways reproduces and in some ways deviates from the past, such that nothing is entirely extraordinary and nothing completely (...) normal? The purpose of the paper is to examine whether the ordinary/extraordinary distinction—or the notion of event, respectively—can be defended against this challenge, i.e., whether it can be given a rigorous definition. Drawing on and departing from the named philosophers, I show that there are three alternative responses—the route of subjective experience, of transcendence, and of negation—and assess their respective merits. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Gianni Vattimo offers a new interpretation of history that challenges standard accounts of the modern period and promotes a new approach to literature. The paper begins with a discussion of how the Cartesian cogito provides an inadequate basis for historical research, and then proposes that modern history can be 'read' when it is reassessed through recent hermeneutics. In 'The End of Modernity' (1985), Vattimo indicates that Heidegger's understanding of the "overcoming (...) of metaphysics" shifted in time, thus suggesting new insights into modernity. The conclusion to the paper applies these insights to show how the notion of a unified literary period is difficult to sustain in a postmodern framework. -/- . (shrink)

In his recently published posthumous works "Prefiguration" and "The Rigorism of Truth" Hans Blumenberg surprisingly steps into the area of political history that he had left widely unconsidered in "Work on Myth". While "Prefiguration" tackles the “demonic” aspects of Napoleon and Hitler that Blumenberg tries to dismantle and bring into derision, in "Rigorism of Truth" he attacks Hannah Arendt's phrase of the Banality of Evil in relation to the Jerusalem trial against Adolf Eichmann in 1961. In this latter issue Blumenberg (...) defends the demonic he sees culminated in the form of Eichmann to assert what he calls the “mythical dimension“ in the Israeli process of nation-building. To him, Eichmann represents a prototypical demon incarnate that must be slaughtered by the heroic character seen in young state Israel. This obviously turns Blumenberg's criticism of Napoleon and Hitler into an affirmation of political myths that, on the face of it, appears to be a contradiction in terms. The essay focuses on this theoretical tension and tries to point out that significance (“Bedeutsamkeit”) is not only a necessity for individual self-assertion (“Selbstbehauptung”) but also a category of communality that must be handled with care. (shrink)

This essay retraces the implications tied to the question of life in a ‘disenchanted’ world by analysing some features of the bioethical and philosophical-political debate. The author discusses the dicothomy between sanctity-of-life and quality-of-life doctrines, in order to show that the opposition between the two perspectives is not altogether convincing. Seen in the light of the metamorphosis of the notion of life , this opposition proves to be the superficial manifestation of a deeper issue, which amounts to social reproduction’s imperatives.