A Review Of Hannah Arendt 's View Of Political Freedom

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-American philosopher, is one of the most influential scholars in 20th century. Arendt had studied under famous German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Jaspers.In all life,she read widely and worked quite good.On many questions and theories,she has her own unique views. For the important issue of freedom of political philosophy, she advocated action and saying and launched some subtle interpretation. As Arendt’s Political Freedom Conception scattered in her views on some of the historical events and political realities,appearing slightly scatterring, so, it is necessary to carefully sort out her important thought. In addition, Arendt’s freedom conception of the also has a certain degree of enlightenment to morden society’s contemporary political democracy-building.In this paper, on base of reading and analyzing Arendt’s original and secondary literature on political freedom,the theme use systems analysis, literature analysis and comparative analysis method of combining to try to recover and show Arendt’s original thinking. Firstly, by quoting some Western thinkers’profound analysis for the modern social crisis,1 want to reveal the lack of political freedom in this modern society, and further point out that the current age of technology has a very close relationship with the prevailing liberalism in modern society. At the same time, via the elaboration of connotating the essence of republican, I indicate the revival of republican is alse a useful attempt to find the lost freedom, which also points out the system social background and practical needs of Arendt political freedom Conception. Secondly, it is this social context that prompted Arendt,who has profound republican spirit Conservation, to ponder freedom directly trace back to the ancient Greek city-state period, and criticize the traditional philosophy of inner freedom and Christian libertarian thought in modern times. It clearly shows Arendt’s political positions, believing that freedom is the words and deeds show of different individuals in the political field, and is the product from the combination of a citizen’s action and reflection. Arendt’s practice of political freedom and closely linked to the history of Western thought is quite unique, specifically divided in the following four areas:freedom and humanity, freedom and action, freedom and the public sphere, freedom and revolution.Additionally, action is the core of freedom,public areas are the place to realize freedom, the people’s creation and complex nature is the premise and basis for action, and the revolution is the important initiatives for a modern state to create and restore the public space. Finally, on the basis of carefully combing integrating a large number of Arendt works of literature, the paper further addressed the unique insight Arendt political freedom for the post-revolutionary generation from the heart and mind, system and practice three dimensions specifically, which also makes Arendt’s concept of freedom to form a more complete history of contact with reality. Of course, the concept of Arendt political freedom also faced practical difficulties, her many political concepts division and definition are often attracted a lot of controversy. However, this idea still has great theoretical value and contemporary significance of the moment construction, and also has some inspiration and reference for the democratic politics in China.