A treatise on Hannah Arendt's "World"

One of the thinkers who offered the most original epistemological contribution to political philosophy in the twentieth century is Hannah Arendt. In her works, she examines such concepts as power, authority, totalitarianism, revolution, freedom, the public sphere, terror, and action, thereby criticizing the political pathologies of the modern age and, above all, attempting to "understand" the human condition as well as political and historical events. The political realm is at the same time the public realm; and the public realm is the world that human beings create by coming together, speaking, and acting. Without freedom and plurality, it is not possible to speak or act within the political sphere. For Arendt, this is because the human being is not only a political creature but also a being endowed with "the capacity for speech". Yet the human being has lost this essential characteristic due to what she calls "political evils" (antisemitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism). In totalitarian regimes, everything—including the human being—has been rendered mute. Totalitarianism in particular has severed the bonds between individuals, destroyed the public sphere, annihilated the common world shared by human beings, and has, in effect, made people worldless. Arendt thus attempts to show us the paths out of this worldlessness. She believes that the reconstruction of humanity's common world is possible only through action and speech. The possibility of people living together peacefully and freely also depends on this. The aim of this thesis, therefore, is to understand what Arendt seeks to construct as the public realm, the "world". To this end, the first chapter of the thesis examines and clarifies the concepts of antisemitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism, which Arendt conceptualizes as "political evils". It is shown that totalitarianism is the greatest political evil, for it strips the human being of their humanity—rendering them unable to speak, to be free, or to act. This situation leads the human being toward world-loss and alienation. The second chapter, drawing on the concepts of the public realm and the common world which occupy a central place in Arendt's political philosophy seeks to demonstrate the possibilities through which the human being can bring themselves into existence. Arendt's conceptual framework reveals that politics is not merely the sum of techniques of power but an arena in which the human being discloses themselves and gains existence within plurality. This, however, is possible only through the human activities she identifies as labor, work, and action. Yet the only fully human activity is action. We may say that action binds the individual to the common world not merely as an individual but as a free being, and that the severing of this bond signifies both a political and existential loss—that is, a kind of world-loss. In conclusion, Arendt's thought grounded in her analysis of the forms of political evil generated by modernity represents an important step toward reconstructing the common world; the problems she addresses can be read as resources for resolving contemporary political issues, and it becomes clear that the common world is of vital importance for human life.