Sulla “humanity in dark times” di Hannah Arendt
In: Shift. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2017
Permalink: http://digital.casalini.it/5153639
Hannah Arendt is a major philosopher of the 20th Century, who thought about the crisis of the fundamentals of philosophy as the eclipse of politics and its sphere of action. The sphere, also called “public space”, in which it is possible to make experience of the World as plural community of all thinking and acting human beings. In her book, Men in Dark Times (1968), she describes profiles of men who had the fortune to live in “dark times”. Firstly, those who experienced Totalitarianism or other oppressive regimes; but, above all, the historical time, which is like clouds upon the “table” of humanity. According to Arendt, Heidegger is the most important thinker who had diagnosed the epochal turn of philosophical crisis as political experience when he wrote “the light of Public obscures everything”. Thus it is necessary to read the Arendtian thesis on Humanity as a strong attempt to overcome the limits of the Heideggerian perspective, especially the undistinguished status of his Öffentlichkeit, as “the they”, “mere talks”, which is not only the social sphere – as he thought – but, above all, the political space in which men and women are acting individuals, expressing opinions. In this way, Arendt appears as one of the post-heideggerian thinker who reacted to the Weltverlust, i.e. what she called worldlessness.
Keywords: Humanity, Arendt, Heidegger, World, Public Space