The philosophical-political tradition in Hannah Arendts thought

• Grant number: 21/00446-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: September 01, 2022
• End date: February 28, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Silvana de Souza Ramos
• Grantee: Victor Frohlich Cortez
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 18/19880-4 - Power, conflict and freedom: Spinoza and the ways of Modern and Contemporary Political Philosophy about democracy, AP.TEM

Abstract

Our intention in this project is to analyze the critique of the Western philosophical-political tradition carried out by Hannah Arendt in her writings. Such critique takes shape during the 1950s and can be found both in the various studies, lectures and essays written by the author at the beginning of this decade, and in the works that characterize her mature political thought, such as The human condition (1958) , Between the past and the future (1961) and On the revolution (1963). Rearticulating and differentiating the notions of "past" and "tradition", this critique of tradition takes the unveiling of the original meaning of bios politikos and its main aspects, such as action and freedom, as its core objective, promoting in such effort an innovative reinterpretation of tradition from its two central landmarks - its birth, in Plato's escape from the bios politikos, and its ending, in the anti-contemplative élan of Karl Marx's thought. Among the several relevant aspects of Arendt's critique, we highlight the problem of the substitution of action, a specifically political activity and possible only due to the human condition of plurality, by fabrication,a procedural activity oriented by means and ends and characterized, above all, by its individuality and fixity - this substitution being, in this way, a sign of the refusal of the bios politikos that would cross the tradition in question. Finally, it we intend to outline that the reinterpretation of the Western philosophical-political tradition and the rescue of legitimately political experiences from the past - based on a methodology of phenomenological roots, marked by the constant etymological and genealogical analysis of political concepts - establishes the bases of Arendtian political thought and his attempt to establish a new form of political theory.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

CORTEZ, Victor Frohlich. Heritages and its predicaments: the break of tradition in Hannah Arendts\' thought. 2024. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.