Theory Of Arendt’s Public Thoughts And Its Enlightenment

Arendt tried to recover an ideal classical public life style from the ancient Greekcity-state experience; and from Aristotle, Heidegger and Jaspers to constantly lookingfor the ideal theory resources to achieve her ideal. Although she did not construct atheoretical system, but she use "Public" as the main line and explored a politicalphilosophy Road that belongs to Arendt.The ancient Greek tradition of‘the distinctions between public and private’ hasbroken in modern society is the major reason for the lost of ‘public’, because inArendt’s opinion, the public realm is the most important form of the ‘public’. And,Arendt thought the major reasons of the limits of the public realm and the privatesphere are fuzzy is that the rise of social field and totalitarianism. Therefore, Arendtbegan to start from the ancient Greek tradition experience, distinguished labor, workand action, and also distinguished three corresponding areas: private sphere, socialsphere and the public realm.She believes that action is different from labor and work,the action is for the purpose of its own, it is free and conscious. Action and judgmentis the important thing to Arendt’s ‘public’, for she thought that action are accordantwith judgment, so the result of action is the formation of public views. AlthoughArendt distinguished the three areas and she has highly praised the public realm butshe never want to abolish the other two areas. The purpose of distinguish is to letpeople understand the meaning of different kinds of activities and to emphasize hercore idea. Also, she thought that private sphere and social sphere can not be public,because the theme of Arendt’s public idea is to realize the meaning of man existent,so she has to protect the public realm. Of course, Arendt’s purpose is still at realizingthe meaning of man’s existence. For one thing, she has to concern the individual asthe natural life, it has death and naissance. For another thing, she has to concern thepolitician’s realize in essence.All the years of her life was closely related to politics, which makes she use the‘public’ as the entry point to her thinking, use the essence of politics run thoughher whole public idea, and her ways to read mind and her life experience all showedout the political. So, we could say, time background and individuals’ uniqueexperiences deeply affected Arendt in the ways and the directions when she was tothinking. Above these, the whole19century’s ideologists have deeply affected bytraditions, Marxism affected Western tradition thought definitely and invisibly and also affected Arendt. So, Arendt’s public idea has the same color of humanism andcommunalism to Marxism.As the most important ring in western political philosophy, Arendt’s public ideahas a direct and far-reaching influence on the later western political thinkers andpolitical philosophy theory, the representative figure is Habermas; Arendt’s publicidea is the direct source of his theory in public realm. What’s more, Arendt’s publicidea also provided reference to the democratic political constructure of China and theconstruction of public space.