A B S T R A C T
(Im)mortal
Action: Arendt and Aristotle
Jussi Backman
M.A., D.E.A., researcher, Department of Philosophy
University of Helsinki
Website
The background for Arendt’s concept of action is the
classical Greek distinction between action (praxis), free
activity carried on for its own sake, and production
(poi_sis), subordinate activity with an external aim. For
the Greeks, the enactment of true praxis required an
organized public realm, the polis that allowed the
beautiful words and deeds of free citizens to gain
recognition and lasting fame, regardless of their external
results. However, the philosophical tradition instituted by
Plato and Aristotle was inherently suspicious of the
political – the supreme praxis, constituting human
fulfillment (eudaimonia), was seen to entail a kind of
permanence that the public sphere, due to the fragility of
the relations of interdependency that constitute it, could
not guarantee. Instead, in the Nicomachean Ethics,
Aristotle concludes that the most perfect action lies in
self-sufficient and solitary philosophical contemplation of
eternal truths where man gains a degree of divine
immortality. According to Arendt, this reduction of true
praxis to theōria gives rise to the long Occidental
tendency of subordinating political action to superhuman
aims that themselves lie beyond the political realm of
human affairs.
The paper will attempt to show that Arendt radicalized
Heidegger’s project of “overcoming” this
Aristotelian “ethics of immortality” in taking
up the aspect of human finitude that Heidegger largely
neglected: the inevitable dependency of action on the
public space of appearance and recognition, an irreducible
background for all mortal meaningfulness. As the
totalitarian experiments of the 20th century have shown,
the subordination of the political realm cannot result in a
reign of absolute truth; instead, it will lead to the
full-scale devastation of all kinds of humanly meaningful
truth.
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