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The structure of the concept of political freedom in Hannah Arendt's philosophy
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The structure of the concept of political freedom in Hannah Arendt's philosophy
Bibliographic description
| title: | The structure of the concept of political freedom in Hannah Arendt's philosophy |
| author: | Eliasz Katarzyna 
|
| journal title: | Avant |
| title of volume: | The theory and practice of political freedom in interdisciplinary perspective |
| volume: | 10 |
| issue: | 1 |
| date of publication : | 2019 |
| pages: | 29-42 |
| ISSN: |
2082-7598 |
| eISSN: |
2082-6710 |
| DOI: | |
| URL: |
http://avant.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/K_Eliasz_The_Structure_of_the_Concept.pdf |
| date accessed: |
2019-12-03 |
| language: | English |
| journal language: | English |
| abstract in English: | This paper is devoted to clarifying Hannah Arendt’s concept of political freedom (which, at certain points, is markedly obscure) by the means of analysing its structure. My analysis proceeds in three steps. Firstly, I distinguish a pre-political concept of freedom as exercising spontaneity, which is at the root of Arendt’s understanding of political freedom. Secondly, I analyse her account of freedom as exercising action and indicate its relationship to the elementary freedom of spontaneity. Arendt endowed action with a distinguished importance, since she assumed that it is the only activity within the vita activa (the other two being labour and work), which has a special anthropological and axiological significance. According to Arendt, only action allows one to truly experience the fundamental aspect of the human condition, which is the fact of human plurality; it is also the only activity which allows one to exercise specifically public principles, such as solidarity, equality, or justice. Thirdly, I indicate how these two accounts of freedom translate into Arendt’s concept of political freedom. This analysis reveals that the Arendtian concept of political freedom is markedly original. She did not define it in a usual manner, i.e. through indicating bundles of legal and political rights which determine the accepted scope of participation in the public affairs. The inherent part of her concept of political freedom is a specific account of how it must be exercised (i.e.through action). Political freedom understood as the participation in governance exercised through action is not merely an activity of instrumental, but also anthropological and axiological importance, which is due to the special anthropological and axiological meaning of action. In the final section, I discuss the practical dimension of Arendt’s theory. She doubted whether the traditional representative democracy is capable of accommodating her "rich" ideal of political freedom, therefore she proposed an alternative account of political system based on councils. I formulate objections against this proposition and demonstrate that councils would presumably fail to accommodate Arendt’s exacting account of political freedom. |
| keywords in English: | Hannah Arendt, political freedom, public action, spontaneity, councils, representative democracy |
| number of pulisher's sheets: | 1 |
| affiliation: | Wydział Filozoficzny : Instytut Filozofii |
| type: | journal article |
| subtype: | academic paper |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Udzielam licencji. Uznanie autorstwa - Użycie niekomercyjne - Bez utworów zależnych 4.0 Międzynarodowa
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