The concept of Koinonia (Being-with-one-another) and the nature (Whatness) of the political activity: Aristotle, Heidegger and Arendt

This thesis aims to point out the significance and the whatness of the political activity based on the basic being determinations and the peculiar being possibilities of the human. I defend three main arguments based on the standpoints of Aristotle, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. Firstly, I defend that political activity is one of the few human activities through which the peculiar possibilities of human beings as being human are revealed and actualized. Accordingly it has a great importance for human life since it has the character of disclosing what is human. Secondly, I defend that the disclosing character of political activity comes from the koinonia (being-with-one-another) of human beings. Political activity directly refers to being and living among other human beings. It is the activity that requires necessarily the presence of others. In this sense, the whatness of the political activity is the human koinonia itself. Thirdly, Aristotle's whole inquiry of politics is an inquiry of the human koinonia and the communal activities (koinonein) that constitute that koinonia, through which what is peculiar to the human being is revealed and actualized. In this sense, the subject of his research is not a human but the human within its being-with-one-another. So, in the foundation of his political inquiry lies the concept of koinonia finding its root in his determination of human beings as zoon politikon, animal meant for the polis (city).