Revolution, foundation and freedom in Hannah Arendt

Abstract

The main goal of this research is to debate Hannah Arendt's interpretation of revolutions. The hypothesis to be tested is that in the analysis of modern political events, Arendt does not only find out when the word appears for the first time, but also searches to understand the movements, the relationship and tensions which political concepts suffered in its development from the antiquity to the contemporary. In other words, the author makes conceptual distinctions finding out the origin of the words, wherever she doesn't rule out the concepts from each other, she first sets them apart and then link them. In the analysis of modern events, Arendt interrelates the political and pre-political elements. The totalitarian regimes - a central event to Arendt's thought - led her to review the political theory and to face up the past for seeking categories that illuminate the present. These regimes led her to elaborate a new view of the past, free from the tradition, and they did not allow Arendt to understand human activities and the relationships between power and violence, public and private space, freedom, liberation and liberty the same way as in antiquity. In this sense, this research aims at studying Arendt's works and critical literature about her in order to discuss the author's way of thinking applied in her understanding of modern political events, particularly the revolutions. (AU)