Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• peyman zanganeh ¹
• Seyyed Hossein Athari ²
• reza Nasiri Hamed ³
• Roohoullah Ruhollah ⁴

¹ Ph.D. Student in Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

² Associate Professor In Political Science, Department of Political Sciences, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad; Mashhad, Iran.

³ Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, University of Tabriz

⁴ Assistant Professor of Political Sciences Faculty of Law and Political Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Abstract

Due to such a disjointed situation, the modern subject has not been able to reconstruct the value order of the past, nor has it been fully able to emerge a new semantic order, at least until now. The horrific nature of such conditions has prompted many political thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, to think of a solution and propose an alternative model to solve the crisis of meaning. Although Arendt is loyal to his subjectivity and free action, he avoids falling into an anarchist and self-centered abyss by proposing some aspects. The main question of the present article is that in a world where the previous meaning-giving orders have collapsed or suffered from a crisis of meaning, and at the same time some new views and ideologies have created a deeper crisis with their totalitarianism, what possibilities does Arendt have for intellectual and practical creation, and what normative requirements should he consider in this direction? In response, the article argues that instead of giving originality to nature or a specific nature for man, Arendt considers human beings as situational beings who create their desired meaning in their interaction with others. Regarding the background of the research, it should be noted that Hannah Arendt's thought on the issue of subject and her activism has been reread and interpreted from various perspectives, including Sila Ben Habib (2003), Jürgen Habermas (1977), Willa (1999), Sophie Lewidolet (2018), etc. have investigated this issue.
Methodology
What has been considered in this article as a novel aspect is the attention to the human condition as the point of support for the subject's action in a situation that can be explained by Gianni Vattimo's view under the concept of hermeneutical nihilism based on the disappearance of metaphysical values and original and transcendent beliefs of the past, in which man achieves a new interpretation of his position in the interaction of the past and the future.
Results
The originality of the subject is interconnected with two principles and is inevitably linked to each other. One is consciousness and the other is action. Arendt pays attention to the human condition and considers it impossible to achieve a correct definition of human nature. According to Arendt, morality cannot be considered as following a series of eternal and eternal rules or principles that are valid for all times and places. On the contrary, ethics should be related to thinking and acting in certain situations that arise from our understanding of our lives and our hope for the future. Arendt sees politics not as an essence or a priori attribute, but as a kind of relationship that occurs in the interaction between human beings. In his view, in the realm of action, man is not completely trapped and subordinate to what he has previously thought in the mental realm, but action, which is the realm of performance, is a sign and manifestation of the unique realities of a particular field and realm, many of whose results and consequences inevitably remain unpredictable and accompanied by danger, and do not submit to determinable and precise calculating requirements. In Arendt's view, in the tradition of Western political philosophy from the beginning, politics was conceived on the basis of the concept of creative labor, not on the concept of free action. By denying and denying Western philosophy from Plato's Republic to Heidegger's existence and time, which focused on death and mortality, Arendt argues for new beginnings in order to save the essence of humanity. In other words, action and even reflection and thinking have inevitable consequences in themselves. For example, thinking in itself is threatening. In his view, action is the most political aspect of human activity and in a sense is his distinctive attribute and characteristic in comparison with other creatures. Arendt's pathological reflection on modern man has been concerned with the loss of the political aspect and dimension of man and its reduction to a mere toiling and struggling being. Arendt's contemplation of judgment, which is based on a combination of the partial (imagination, taste, and common sense) and the general (situationality and spatiality), and at the same time imagination as a prominent feature of the intersubjective subject that helps to transcend the bottleneck of time and space, indicates the adoption of aesthetic arrangements for understanding the world and, as Watimo says, a kind of hermeneutical act to make sense of the inanimate world. In other words, the act of judging in Arendt's view is done by relying on meaning-giving propositions that eliminate meaninglessness and nihilism.
 
 
Discussion and Conclusion
Arendt is one of the thinkers who considers the individual subject in an inevitable and permanent continuity with the other in the public sphere and at the same time considers the support of the subject to prove its position in the field of action. In his thought, the mysterious aspects of the subject are less visible. Also, some stable, extra-temporal, and extra-spatial concepts in thought such as friendship, loyalty to promises, etc. As seen in Jaspers' thinking as common human desires along with attention to context, it seems that Arendt does not pay attention to those concepts because of the emphasis on the situationality of the subject.

Keywords

• Freedom
• Inter-Learning
• Action
• Nihilism
• Human Condition