Hannah Arendt Thesis

Research Proposal for Master of Philosophy in Humanities

Thesis Title:

Historical Dimension of Action: Political Experience in Hannah Arendt’s Thought

Name of Applicant: Sigmund Tung-tin WONG Application No.: 61600000141 Research Interest: History of Political Thought

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Statement of Purpose 1

Chapter 2: Research Questions 3

Chapter 3: Provisional Structural Design and Outline for the MPhil Thesis 4

Chapter 4: Literature Review 6

I. Introduction 6

II. Introductory Literature about the Life and Thought of Hannah Arendt 7

III. Literature on the Sphere and Development of Arendtian Political Experience

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The first part is the introduction. The second part chronologically analyzes in general the relevant key writings of Arendt, which sketch the development of Arendtian political experience, and introduces its paramount components and their interrelationships, as well as (if possible) the way intellectual context could influence the formation of Arendt’s political experience. The third part deals with three background topics before coming into Arendtian political experience, including totalitarianism (the fatal political experience together with wars and exile in the first half of the twentieth century, and the original impetus for Arendt resorting to political experience), political tradition (as opposition against political action) and action (as the essential foundation of active political experience). The following part focuses on Arendt’s understanding of the pre-modern political experience in ancient Greece, Rome, Christianity and the Middle age, which is presented in Arendt’s manuscript marked in 1963 and published in 2005. This part essentially investigates the historical prototypes for the active political experience in Arendt’s thought and her narrative of antique public sphere, which is illuminating for many other clues in Arendt’s thought. The third part will come to the alienation and extension of the pre-modern political experience. In this part, the first topic is the revolution, which Arendt believes is closely related to Roman political experience and Christian faith. the second topic is Arendt’s critique of modernity, which is divided into two profiles, the labor and the rise of “the social”, and I will argue that modernity is pro forma the alienation of ancient Greek political experience. The next topic is about Arendt’s cogitation of the political experience after the WWII, from which Arendt sees the prospect of reviving