The Ontological Grounding of Hannah Arendt's Political Ethics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3970021 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Simas Čelutka (0000-0002-2764-8806, Vilnius University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 441-462 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The European Legacy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10848770.2023.2229150 |
| OpenAlex | W4382286180 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 11 |
This paper examines Hannah Arendt’s account of the relationship between politics and morality. Many critics have argued that Arendt’s conception of political action lacks any moral foundations, while others have tried to focus on her understanding of thinking as a normative source of her ethics. In contrast to these views, I present an alternative explanation and argue that the sources of Arendt’s political ethics are located neither in the faculty of thinking nor in extrapolitical moral norms or rules, but in the ontological conditions of action, specifically worldliness, natality and plurality. This interpretation allows us to make sense of Arendt’s fragmented, unsystematic accounts of the various virtues and moral dispositions required for authentic politics: courage, responsibility, care, respect, moderation, solidarity and gratitude. In particular, an inquiry into the ontological sources of political ethics provides a solid normative grounding for the two moral dispositions—promise and forgiveness—that form an explicit “moral code” of political action for Arendt
Epistemology · Forgiveness · Morality · Normative · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solidarity · Theology · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and Literary Analysis · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |