Thinking without a bannister: An interpretation of Hannah Arendt's aesthetic politics

By using the term "aesthetic politics" to describe Arendt's philosophy, I attempt to highlight one very important characteristic of her thought--that Arendt defines the nature and the value of politics almost exclusively from the standpoint of beauty, rather than that of truth or morality. For Arendt, beauty is the highest value of politics. Political action aims to display a person's unique personality, and to realize his or her virtu (virtuosity). Neither instrumental factors, nor moral considerations, nor any philosophical truth can compete with the concern of the beautiful in claiming the attention of political men.;Chapter One is a contextual analysis of Arendt's intellectual background. This includes the general influence of German Existenz philosophy as it is embodied in the thought of Nietzsche, and the insightful teaching Arendt receives from Heidegger and Jaspers. Chapter Two is a preliminary treatment of Arendt's aesthetic politics. Here I deal with Arendt's diagnosis of the problems of modernity, and explain why in her mind a "new science of politics"--a politics which rejects both the claim of truth and the demands of morality--is necessary for an age in which traditional values are no longer valid. In Chapter Three and Chapter Four, I will substantiate my argument that for Arendt politics is the pursuit and realization of the beautiful by examining how she compares political action to theatric performance, how she promotes beauty, glory, and greatness as the highest value of political action, and how she thinks that spectacular speech-acts can rebuild a genuine public realm which since the downfall of the Greek polis has remained more or less extinct. Finally I will offer my critical evaluation of Arendt's aesthetic politics in Chapter Five. I think Arendt's greatest contribution to political theory is her attempt to recover an existential-aesthetic dimension of political action, and use it as a weapon to fight against any determinist explanation of human affairs. But two serious problems threaten to defeat her project: her ambiguous understanding of what actually constitutes a political action; and her inadequate argument about the role of morality. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).