Ханна Арендт – философ?
Keywords:
liberty, freedom, beginning of something new, ancient polis, free will, willpower, will-to-power, performing action, political realm, human condition, political science, philosophy, Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Mille.Abstract
The philosophical essay “What is Freedom” by Hannah Arendt though modest in extent,
serves as a kind of a key deciphering and elucidating the underlying import of her major works
written both before and after this essay, namely “The origins of totalitarianism”, “Vita activa”,
“On revolution”, “On violence” etc. Arendt analyses such concepts as “freedom of the mind”,
“freedom of the will”, showing that the roots of the very phenomenon of freedom lie in the political
realm. Freedom is a faculty of man to begin something new, non-existent in this world. It is a
capacity to interrupt “automatic” processes in natural as well as political sphere. In the Preface
the translator places the questions raised in essay in a wider framework of Hannah Arendt’s work.
