More than a stage : the World in Hannah Arendt's Philosophy of Action

Abstract

Paper presented during the Annual Conference of the Philosophical Society of Southern Africa, 16 - 18 January 2008. Hosted by the Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria. ABSTRACT: This paper explores the centrality of the world in Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of action. Arendt’s notion of performative action politics is often criticized as politically irrelevant and even insignificant. It is difficult to conceptualize and invoke a more meaningful action politics without first considering the conditions, clearly of great importance to Arendt, under which action can unfold in the first place. According to Arendt, natality and plurality constitute the conditions of freedom and action respectively. A permanent, durable world is also necessary to actualize these capacities. This, however, posits an understanding of action as a constant struggle to maintain itself as an exercise of freedom that simultaneously requires its reification into a permanent, worldly object. This is not simply a weakness of action or of Arendt’s philosophy of action, but reveals an underlying tension between the modes and conditions of human being, that is, between political action and private fabrication, and between a fragile freedom and durable world.