The Nature of Political Community

Abstract

Arendt’s theory of politics is grounded in her ontological analysis of man’s being-in-the-world outlined in the previous two chapters. As we saw, man is for her a public as well as a social being. And qua public being, he needs public space in order to assure himself of his own and the world’s reality, develop such distinctively human capacities as impartiality, imagination, judgement and thought, impose a measure of order on his psyche, acquire a sense of personal identity, and to act and thereby both give a meaning to his life and raise the level of human existence. Since public space is so crucial to human existence, Arendt advocates what I might call a public community, a community whose members passionately seek and are provided formal and informal public spaces in all areas of life. A public community is Arendt’s alternative to the ‘free’ or ‘open’ society of the liberals.