Bake To Politics Itself

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is a German-American philosopher, political scientist, and social critic. In Arendt's life, she has read widely and written a lot of works. And shehas her own unique view on many issues and theories. Regarding Arendt as a peripheral scholar, the paper discusses political philosophy originated from Arendt. In Arendt's opinion, the shortcomings of traditional Western political philosophy was not because it didn't pay close attention to politics, but their interest in politics didn't come from the real respect in politics itself. For those traditional political philosophers, human's political phenomenon was not worth taking seriously, what they care about was "how philosophy protects themselves from the restraint of human affairs." Therefore, although those traditional philosophers thought that the root of philosophy is amazement, but human political phenomenon obviously was not the objects for amazement, namely political phenomenon was not enough to be philosophical questions. So the political philosophy they discussed was not political itself. This is the essence that Arendt criticizes about traditional western political philosophy.The core of Arendt's political thought is mutual action and public space. Based on expatiating Aristotle's city-states theory, Arendt distinguished public space and private space, skill and action; restored Aristotle's thoughts on practice. Arendt argued that understanding the nature of politics couldn't lose contact with recalling life experience from the Athens city of Greece, because just real political experience in ancient Greece can be identified clearly by modern people. The experience was that citizens who were free and equal could participate in public life, show their real ego, express their own opinions, listen to other's speech, and discuss public issues together. Arendt pointed that, political life was closely related to the realization of human's freedom and obtaining of the meaning of life. Because the differences between human and animals lay in the former was unique from each other and could make new action anytime and anywhere; everyone may form a unique opinion on an issue. So people need to create a world which must ensure different opinions can be heard and exchanged; people need to live a true political life.This paper expounds what Arendt criticized and analyzed about western classical political theory; on this basis states Arendt's political theories which is throughout her thoughts, actions and free; then illustrates the multiple nature for human's action situation. The so-called "It is the men rather than man who survive on the earth while live in the world", this is an existential situation for life, it means that equal and unique people come together and form a public domain. So in Arendt's opinion, multiple is the existence condition for action and public domain; she also demonstrates once again action and public areas were identity, which confirm Aristotle's "man is by nature a political animal"——the ontology definition for political.