How Can Action Be Possible?

In nowadays academic community, the importance of public realm problem, as a theoretical paradigm which studying on modern society, has been more and more obvious. Hannah Arendt, as the most original thinker in 20 th century, when she had went through a sequence of events, such as totalitarianism, political evil, crises of the republic and so on, undertakes the responsibility of time, and rethinks the crises of modern politics actively. She tries to save the dilemmas of modern politics based on the analyzing of false politics and treated the view about action and public realm as the key point. The paper aims to seek for the possibility about freedom based on analyzing Arendt’s public realm problem systematically.The essence of public realm is the intimate relationship among action and politics, action and public, action and freedom. To have a public political life in public realm is to have political freedom and from this people can own dignity, and this is also the meaning of life. But in modern society, the public realm has the crises to be destroyed. The tradition of western political thought has an inhibition on public life of action from the old and the political position is humble. The primary cause of public realm decline is that the growth of modern society has a big attack on action, and the consumption society leads people to focus on economy not political life. Totalitarianism has a big wreck on public realm and this produces the lonely group. The typical situation in modern times is also the appearance of the world alienation, and all that is solid melts into air. The crises of public realm needs the rescue of action and Arendt attempts to rebuild the public realm. On the one hand, this needs man go back to the life of the mind from the action, on the other hand, from the life of the mind to the action, which will realize the rescue of action. Specifically, the rebuilding of the public realm calls for promoting the thinking, willing and judging of human being, recovering the lost revolutionary spirit and highlighting the meaning of power. Therefore, the theoretic dilemmas of public realm can’t be ignored and it is the Utopia of pure politics. Dichotomy of public realm and private realm is full of contradictions; political action, to exclude the substantive content, is difficult to maintain; theory of political participation is full of dilemmas. Academics try to look for ways out for public realm dilemmas from different aspects: liberalism supplies the “minimal state”; communitarianism supplies the “community of identity”; and Marxism supplies the “Free men’s union”. All the above supply possible ways to quest Arendt’s public realm dilemmas.