Critical Hermeneutics

1975-2025: Imaginary Interviews with Hannah Arendt

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Editor's Introduction

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Among the many possible ways to pay tribute to a thinker such as Hannah Arendt, on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, we were decided to adopt an unprecedented approach: an imaginary interview. This choice responds to her desire – expressed repeatedly in her works – to invite future readers to grasp the vitality of her thinking, without stopping at the final results and avoiding the risk of imprisoning her philosophy within systematic and rigid formulas. It is a way of questioning the nature of concepts, the development of arguments and the dynamics of Arendt's reflections, which often germinated in virtuous exchanges of opinion during meetings with her friends – philosophers and poets, historians and writers – who crowded her home...

Editoriale

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Fra i molti modi possibili di rendere omaggio a una pensatrice come Hannah Arendt, nel cinquantesimo anniversario della sua scomparsa, si è deciso di adottare una modalità inedita: un’intervista immaginaria. Tale scelta risponde al desiderio – più volte espresso nelle sue opere – di invitare i futuri lettori a cogliere la vitalità del suo pensiero, senza arrestarsi ai risultati conclusivi e scongiurando il rischio di imprigionare la sua filosofia entro formule sistematiche e rigide. Un modo per rimettere in discussione la natura dei concetti, lo sviluppo delle argomentazioni e la dinamica delle riflessioni arendtiane, spesso germinate in virtuosi scambi di opinioni durante gli incontri con i suoi amici – filosofi e poeti, storici e letterati – che affollavano la sua abitazione.

The Human Condition

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In her work Vita activa, the philosopher coins the term “human condition” to address the anthropological and political question in modernity.

Freedom and Revolution

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In her book On Revolution, Arendt analyses the most important modern revolutions in order to understand the true meaning of political freedom and the foundation of a new political body.

Hannah Arendt and Nativity between Ontological and Political Issues

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The concept of “birth” in Hannah Arendt's philosophy reveals the novelty, freedom and responsibility of human action. The analysis develops through references to Augustine, Heidegger and the Christian tradition, emphasising the value of birth for understanding human beings and political life.

Hannah Arendt and Jewishness as Pariah

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In her reflections, Arendt distinguishes between Judaism in the sense of faith in the Jewish religion and its social, political and individual dimension, which is Jewishness.

Arendt as a Reader of Buber

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Through her comparison with the person and work of Martin Buber, Arendt presents her reflections on Zionism and the Judenfrage.

Judgment

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For Arendt, exercising the faculty of judgement is the only way to make oneself visible to oneself and others in the public space and in the political sphere.

On Power and Its Limits

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Reflection on “totalitarianism” allows Arendt to analyse mass society, the bureaucratic system and a concept of “dangerous” freedom which, deprived of political tension, risks becoming violent and autodestructive for current democratic systems.

Hannah Arendt and Forgiveness

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In her reflection on forgiveness, Arendt not only endeavours to free it from its religious context, but also attempts to revive a new concept that could become a pillar of my political theory. These reflections resurface in the post-war debate on Germany's guilt and what she considers to be the senseless demand for forgiveness.

Mass Society and the Political Crisis

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In Vita activa, Arendt's reflection on mass society reveals the impoverishment that has occurred in modernity in the concept of the world, no longer understood as the space created between people, when it is the space that brings them together or separates them, thanks to the fact that it is the place where freedom and political action occur.

Hermeneutics, Historicism and Surroundings

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About a century after the cultural events that fostered the development of philosophical hermeneutics, I believe it is useful to return to its original historicist influence. This work draws inspiration from the project of a great Dictionary of Hermeneutics (edited by Gaspare Mura and Vinicio Busacchi), aimed at illustrating its historical profiles, systematic aspects and theoretical issues across the board. In the following pages, I would like to draw attention to the way in which some of the great classics of the twentieth-century hermeneutic tradition took a specific position in dealing with the question of historical knowledge. This was done through original reinterpretations of the philosophical problems of time and the past with respect to the legacy of the historicist tradition and, in particular, with respect to its outcomes in German culture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I will not propose a historical reconstruction, but rather will attempt to explore the theoretical positions, problems and the attempts made at answers through the conceptual and argumentative analysis of some canonical texts. Most space is devoted to Martin Heidegger, as the protagonist of the ontological shift in the theory of understanding that largely determined the subsequent developments of hermeneutics. Given their depth and the particularly rich and complex web of theoretical paths that run through Sein und Zeit, it seemed necessary to select a specific reading itinerary for the work, re-examining the sections that can be linked to the question of history. In order to give adequate prominence to the plurality of philosophical voices and sensibilities involved, I have divided the work into two parts. In the first, I present some theoretical issues of German historicism, in order to highlight the significance of the ontological shift in Heidegger, which is then analysed in detail. The second part examines the interesting and diverse versions of the hermeneutic paradigm in Gadamer and Ricoeur.

Il futuro della metafisica (F. Falappa)

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Fabiola Falappa’s recent work, The Future of Metaphysics. An interpretation of Karl Jaspers’ legacy, published by Mimesis at the end of last year, revisits the thought of Karl Jaspers as a heritage to be preserved and cultivated. Her aim is to offer a new beginning for metaphysics and to explore what a renewed metaphysical orientation might offer in our present condition.

Supplementary Note, CH, vol 8, n 1, 2024

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Supplementary note to Entrudo Rech, P. (2024). Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis: Interview with Amy Allen. Critical Hermeneutics, 8(1), 475-500. https://doi.org/10.13125/CH/6090.

Contents / Indice

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Contents/Indice