Publication Details

Abstract

The article addresses the concept of life in relation to humanities as seen by Hannah Arendt. In the 1950s, Arendt criticized humanities for their inability to understand the specific character of the world as a space of appearance in which historical events take place. Instead they focused on grasping the expressions of human nature and/or a human as being stripped of normal relations to the others. These two moments are inherently intertwined since the latter is possible only under the condition of worllessness. Arendt’s aim is not only to provide a methodological alternative, but also to understand the historical conditions under which the world as a condition and framework of understanding is abandoned. In her approach the concept of life is of central importance, since it is the background against which modern self-interpretation takes place and is therefore the formative condition of the absence of the world.