THE LIMITS OF POLITICS IN HANNAH ARENDT

The political in H. Arendt is not one sphere of activity amongst others; it constitutes the horizon in which the drama of human action develops. Its essential coordinates are: principles, power, and institutions. Its function is to set limits to the invading violence of the world, interpreted not so much as a war of some against others, but as a war against the fact that all human things are finite. The reason that institutes politics is self-affirmation by means of the creation of a shared world. This concept is problematic because of the lack of content and objective possibilities of a kind of sociability different to political sociability per se, and because it burdens the political with an excessive signification: it has to deal with liberation from radical contingency and from any last meaning.