Miss Arendt is more reticent than, perhaps, she should be, about what actually went on in this public realm of the Greeks. —W. H. Auden.

Abstract Hannah Arendt frequently referred to herself as a phenomenologist in that she wished to reveal how action, in the Greek sense of praxis, engenders a public space of appearances or of phenomenality. The life of the Greek city?state, of the polis, was made possible through this activity, this bios politikos. However, beginning with Plato and continuing right down to Hegel and Heidegger, there has been a sustained attempt to cover up and conceal the specific phenomenality of the bios politikos (...) in favour of the bios theoretikos, involving the substitution of poiesis and theoria for the life of praxis. At the roots of this concealment of the active life is a misunderstanding of the true nature of the theoretical and its highest form, namely, thinking. (shrink)

While the recent publication of the Hannah Arendt-Martin Heidegger correspondence confirms that there existed a close personal tie between these two thinkers, the relation between their philosophies is far more problematic. This article argues that Arendt's originality presents itself in its full light in her two major theoretical works of the 1950s, Between Past and Future and The Human Condition , when these works are considered to present a thinly veiled, implicit critique of Heidegger's philosophy. Arendt's critique becomes especially visible (...) in the 'existential' role that she attributed to natality in its relation to political action and to remembrance, placing in question the central orientation of Heidegger's existential ontology in terms of being-toward-death. (shrink)

The article seeks to understand Hannah Arendt's political thinking by relating it to an issue which is crucial to the thinking of the later Heidegger, i.e., the problem of originality ( Anfänglichkeit) and history. In opposition to Hegel's thesis of the “end of art,” Heidegger envisages in “great art” such as Hölderlin's poetry a new origin of thinking and history. The end of art, which Hegel holds to be necessary, is in Heidegger's view to be overcome precisely because art, for (...) him, entails an origin which is not a “Not yet” of a teleological perfection in Hegel's sense, but a “Not yet” of a future history. However, Heidegger's orientation towards a “pure” origin qua future leads him to poietically escape the realm of the Political and the questions of praxis and practical rationality.Like Heidegger, Arendt is taken with the problem of origin; but in contrast to her former teacher, she tries to regain what Heidegger thought he could leave, viz., the dimension of the genuine Political and of acting. The original sense of acting (for Arendt, the capability of human beings to make a new beginning) can be observed in the Greek polis as well as in the American Revolution in modern times: The revolutionary act of a total new beginning elucidates, according to Arendt, what “acting” means in the full and truly political sense. However, Arendt's notion of an epochal beginning seems one-sided, and her abstract concept of acting seems to foster a mere actionism and anarchy. Therefore, contrary to Arendt's claims, the concept of the Political which she shapes in accordance with the extraordinary experiences of an epochal acting has apolitical consequences. The task of thinking after Heidegger and Arendt thus remains one of determining the political character of action in a convincing manner. In this respect, the paper pleads for a rethinking of Hegel's concept of ethical life ( Sittlichkeit). (shrink)

Margaret Canovan argues in this book that much of the published work on Arendt has been flawed by serious misunderstandings, arising from a failure to see her work in its proper context. The author shows how such misunderstanding was possible, and offers a fundamental reinterpretation, drawing on Arendt's unpublished as well as her published work, which sheds new light on most areas of her thought.

Dieser Aufsatz, der sich den Interpretationen u. a. von Robert Bernasconi, Jacques Taminiaux und Franco Volpi anschließt, betrachtet Heideggers „Wiederholung“ der praktischen Philosophie des Aristoteles als eine Radikalisierung des aristotelischen Begriffs des Handelns (praxis). Die moderne „Not des Wohnens“ erweist sich als ein Ergebnis der Unterordnung der Endlichkeit und Zeitlichkeit des menschlichen Handelns in der abendländischen philosophischen Tradition unter die metaphysischen und theologischen Ideale, die aus dem anfänglichen Verständnis der Seiendheit als beständiger Anwesenheit (ousia) hervorgehen. Die Grundform dieser Unterordnung ist (...) die aristotelische Auslegung der reinen praxis als eine „übermenschlich“ selbstgenügsame Betrachtung ohne äußere Zwecke. Die Behandlung der praktischen „Besinnung“ (phronesis) in der Nikomachischen Ethik bietet jedoch eine Einsicht in die endliche und situationsbedingte Verfassung der eigentlich menschlichen Selbstverwirklichung. Die Lektüre der Nikomachischen Ethik in Heideggers Marburger Vorlesung über Platons Sophistes kann als der Ausgangspunkt für die Geschichte des tätigen Lebens in Hannah Arendts Vita activa angesehen werden. Gleichwohl gliedert Arendt die geschichtliche Entwicklung der praxis ausdrücklicher als Heidegger auf und bedenkt auch, was bei Heidegger weitgehend ungedacht bleibt: den politischen Charakter der ursprünglichen praxis und das apolitische Wesen der Philosophie. (shrink)