In the following, I will trace the presence of Montesquieu in Arendt’s work, giving an account of both Arendt’s praise for the French writer’s particular way of thinking the political and his approach to problems that will become central to the development of Arendt’s own thought. Firstly, I will follow Arendt down the path that led her to discover fundamental tools in Montesquieu for understanding totalitarianism “with eyes unclouded by philosophy.” Secondly, I will track the way in which the Arendtian (...) reconceptualization of some key political words—power, law and freedom—is threaded through with her reading of the French author. Thirdly, I will look into the way in which Montesquieu’s formulation of a particular link between what Arendt calls the basic experience and the political regime, allows her to go on to discover a criteria that makes it possible to distinguish between political and anti-political ways of living together; and allows us to see that there is a phenomenally essential element within tyranny and totalitarianism that ensures that it “develops the germs of its own destruction the moment it comes into existence.”. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of Thomas Hobbes. We will argue that, for Carl Schmitt, the first modern answer to the problem of the absence of a transcendent foundation for the political order was to be found in Hobbes’ theory. In two phases, we examine the tension that Schmitt finds in the Hobbesian solution to the problem of truth in politics. First, we present some problems that Schmitt encountered in Hobbes’ solution, focusing on Schmitt’s interpretation of the Hobbesian (...) distinction between inner faith and outer confession. Second, we outline some difficulties that arise from Schmitt’s interpretation of this problem. (shrink)

La afinidad entre Hannah Arendt y Claude Lefort puede ser rastreada a través de diversos ejes: la cercanía y la distancia en la interpretación que ambos hacen del totalitarismo, la indagación en torno al problema de la igualdad en la modernidad, la interrogación sobre el estatuto de los derechos humanos o el intento renovado por ambos por pensar los acontecimientos sin barandillas. En este artículo me propongo abordar estos ejes de manera tangencial: rastreando la manera en la que Lefort lee (...) La condición humana, intentaré identificar las razones que lo llevan a considerar que —a pesar de entender que Arendt es, sino la mejor, una de las más afines compañeras en la empresa de “restaurar la filosofía política”— su obra ofrece a la vez un punto de partida y un límite para repensar lo político. (shrink)