The decline of the public domain and the enchantment with the private

The public and private domains in Hannah Arendt are the subjects of this research. Considering Arendt's critique of the modern era as to the process of alienation and the overvaluation of individual interests over the common world addressed in The Human Condition, we investigate the actuality of her criticism after 60 years of publication. The objective is to characterize the public and private domains according to Arendt and to update the author's criticism about the gradual confusion between both domains provoked by the promotion of the social. Arendt demonstrates that in the modern era the decline of the public domain was accompanied by the exacerbated valuation of the private and the advent of the social. Private interest surpassed the public domain to the point that the latter was colonized by the egoism typical of the field of necessity, and the public domain became a means to meet and fulfill personal satisfaction. In the modern era, the common good and the common world are equivalent to the sum of private interests. The hypothesis that guides this reflection points to the total enchantment provoked by the private domain and by the defeat of politics provoked by the weakening and decline of the public domain. The research is bibliographical and uses the reading, analysis, comprehension, and theoretical reconstruction of the texts of Hannah Arendt and her commentators. We show that the common world remains colonized and that the men and women constituting it are reduced to mere producers and consumers, which makes it possible to ascertain the actuality of Arendt's The Human Condition 60 years after its publication.