This introduction to Hannah Arendt's political thinking based on a very close reading of the
most relevant texts suggests that her core teaching culminates in a unique kind of political
humanism. It consists of the disclosure of unique individual personalities in free public
actions inspired by public principles. The full meaning of such principled actions and its
actors emerges from an uneasy symbiosis between actors and their casts of judgmental
spectators. But it is the free spectators of action who determine its possible meanings.
Importantly only such public meanings save humans from the abyss of meaningless existence.
Still and even though individuals are driven by an urge to public self-presentation Arendt
seems to insist that human freedom ultimately rests on our inability to fully disclose who we
are. Perhaps paradoxically Arendt's emphasis on a very public humanism links freedom to what
remains ineffable about being human. After the destruction wrought by 20th century
totalitarianism Arendt saw important residues of public freedom especially in the modern
democratic republic of the United States.
