Hannah Arendts Political Humanism - Horst Mewes Kartoniert (TB)

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 t he 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.