Arendt as Atypical

Abstract

This chapter presents three categories as indispensable to Arendt’s thought: (1) spaces of appearance, (2) councils, constitutions, and legitimate foundations, and (3) an embrace and realization of what it means to be alive. The first of these is distinguished as the open meeting places in which speech and action of political significance and signification can occur. The second category enables the visible presentation and representation of politics to take on a worldly presence and life. And lastly, the first two categories make possible a third—an embrace and realization of what it means to be alive—designating that what Arendt understands as the realization of the human in and through the political relies on what Arendt posits as conditional to the human qua human.