The politics impossibility and the mass society

• Grant number: 14/19342-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2014
• Effective date (End): November 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Yara Adario Frateschi
• Grantee: Nathalia Rodrigues da Costa
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project proposes a study on the relationship between Arendt's concepts of singularity, plurality, political action and freedom, present in The Human Condition. For this purpose we will investigate the criticism that the author does to the mass society present also, and more decisively, in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Going through to this criticism, we intend to point to what extent the mass society tends to become unviable to singularity, plurality, political action and freedom, which are, according to Arendt, conditions of the politics itself. In this sense, we intend also to show how the tendency of mass society to make them infeasible may forbid, ultimately, the effectuation of politics, considering that it presupposes an interaction between men, pervading by action and by discourse. For this purpose we divide the project into three major themes with which we intend to: 1) to characterize the mass society, showing how it would make infeasible the effectuation of the singularity, plurality, political action and freedom; 2) to show how, making infeasible the effectuation of singularity, plurality, political action and freedom, the mass society can be considered apolitical and non-political; and what the possible consequence of a society where there is no space for the political and there is no common space; 3) explain what the author meant primarily by singularity, plurality, political action and freedom and its relationship with politics. (AU)