This essay seeks to understand Hannah Arendt’s notion of the political as an “in-between.” The in-between appears to be the intersubjectivity and relations of interaction in a public sphere, which Arendt suggests as a way of understanding the political as an end in itself. Judith Butler has distinguished Arendt’s notion of the political as essentially relational, but which dismisses the material interdependence as a precondition to political participation. This essay argues that Arendt's notion of the political must be seen in context of her critique of modernity in which the public sphere is dominated by economic terms, “the social”. This essay provides a background for this critique, and how Arendt's distinction between the political and "the social" can be understood. The result is a politics separated from economics, but in which we can stress the question of intersubjectivity at its core. The conclusion is that Arendt certainly recognizes material interdependence as a precondition for politics, but the political in Arendtentian terms insist on a political commonality beyond any common ground, for which the in-between and the relation can emerge as the (non)essence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-44691 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Beckman, Amanda |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Filosofi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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