Arent's fear of the social

Hannah Arendt, İnsanlık Durumu adlı eserinde, özgürlük, aksiyon ve siyasal kavramlarının birbiriyle ilişkili doğasını tahlil eder. Ancak toplumsal kavramı kitaptaki en karmaşık temalardan biri olarak belirir. Bu makalede, ilk olarak Arendtin kitabında toplumsalın ortaya çıkışını anlattığı ikinci bölüm üzerinde durulduktan sonra, ünlü Arendt yorumcuları Hanna Fenichel Pitkin ve Seyla Benhabibin Arendtçi toplumsala dair farklı yorumları değerlendirilecektir. Burada, Pitkinin toplumsalın ortaya çıkışını insan iradesinin yadsınmasıyla irtibatlandırmasının ve Benhabibin toplumsalı sosyallik olarak yorumlamasının, toplumsalın getirdiği yıkım ve alternatif bir kamusallık oluşturma/siyasalı yeniden keşfetme ihtimalini sunması bakımından toplumsalın en doğru yorumu olduğu savunulmaktadır.

Arendt in toplumsala dair endişesi

In her book, The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt explores the interconnected nature of the concepts of freedom, action, and the political. However, the theme of the social remains one of the most perplexing aspects throughout the book. After presenting an exegesis of the second chapter of the book where Arendt discussed rise of the social predominantly, this article will try to evaluate different meanings of the social by incorporating eminent Arendt critics Hanna Fenichel Pitkin and Seyla Benhabib. The present article defends that Pitkin s idea that linked rise of the social to the denial of human agency and Benhabib s analysis of the social as sociability best expressed the meaning of the social in terms of showing both the destruction it caused and the possibility it held to construct an alternative public sphere and re-invent politics.

___

  • Arendt, H. (1973). The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: HBJ Books.
  • Arendt, H. (1998). The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Benhabib, S. (1990). Hannah Arendt and the Redemptive Power of Narrative. Social Research, 57 (1), 167-196.
  • Benhabib, S. (1995). The Pariah and Her Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Biography of Rahel Varnhagen. Political Theory, 23 (1), 5-24.
  • Benhabib, S. (1996). The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. London: Sage Publications.
  • Canovan, M. (1998). Introduction. H. Arendt, The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  • D’Entreves, M. P. (1994). The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt. London & New York: Routledge.
  • Disch, L. J. (1993). More Truth than Fact: Storytelling as Critical Understanding in the Writings of Hannah Arendt. Political Theory. 21 (4), 665-694.
  • McGowan, J. (1997). Must Politics Be Violent? Arendt’s Utopia Vision. Eds. C. Calhoun & J. McGowan, Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Pitkin, H. F. (1998). The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Villa, D. R. (1996). Arendt and Heidegger: The Faith of the Political. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Villa, D. R. (2007). Introduction: The Development of Arendt’s Political Thought. Ed. D. Villa, The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.