PLURALITY AND HUMANISM: A CRITICAL ANALYSISOF ARENDTIAN THOUGHT OF POLITICS

ABSTRACT: Confronted with the totalitarian barbarity that had led to the destruction of the human being, Arendt will propose a political-humanist project through her concept of plurality. In fact, it is the sine qua non and per quam conditions of political life. According to the latter, plurality is a political virtue and is defined as the possibility for people to act, speak and think together, in other words, to be in correlation with others. Based on an analytic-critical approach, our ambition in this article is to present the humanistic meaning of plurality, and to show that this Arendtian paradigm, so much praised for its attachment to humanism, is only a sham. By arguing that there is true humanity only in the political space of equals, does Arendt not turn plurality into a selective paradigm? Isn’t Arendt’s plural humanism in its anti-humanist principle?
Keywords: plurality, humanism, totalitarianism, action, birthrate