HannahArendt.net (E-Journal)

Bernal, Angelika

German

A Revolution in Law’s Republic: Arendt and Michelman in Dialogue

Kohn, Jerome

Remarks on Imperialism and Politics

Thürmer-Rohr, Christina

Zum ‚dialogischen Prinzip’ im politischen Denken von Hannah Arendt

Arendt, Hannah

Ausgabe 1, Band 5 – November 2009 
Statelesness
Hannah Arendt
Berkeley [pencilled]
4/22/55
Vorbemerkung der Redaktion: Unter dem Titel „Statelessness“ und dem Datum 22. 
April 1955 hat Hannah Arendt eine vierseitige Vortragsskizze hinterlassen, die unter 
den „Hannah Arendt Papers“ der Library of Congress eingesehen werden kann. Das 
Manuskript enthält ausserdem von Arendts Hand den Hinweis „Berkeley“, woraus zu 
schließen ist, dass es sich um einen Vortrag an der University of California at 
Berkeley handelt, wo Arendt im Frühjahrssemester 1955 lehrte. In einem Brief vom 
Dienstag, den 19. April 1955, schreibt Arendt an ihren Mann, Heinrich Blücher: 
„Morgen muß ich im Historiker-Club sprechen, Freitag bei den Vereinigten 
Soziologen und Political Science-Studenten [...]“. Der letztgenannten 
Vortragsverpflichtung ordnen wir das Manuskript „Statelessness“ zu. Wir haben es 
transkribiert, durchgesehen und reproduzieren es hier mit freundlicher 
Genehmigung des Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust.
Zur Erläuterung sei noch angefügt:
- John Hope Simpson veröffentlichte 1939 sein Buch The Refugee Problem, auf das 
sich Hannah Arendt offenbar bezieht.
- Mit „Childs“ ist wahrscheinlich der folgende Titel gemeint, den Hannah Arendt 
mehrfach in Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft zitiert: Stephen Lawford 
Childs, „Refugees – A Permanent Problem in International Organization“, in: War Is 
Not Inevitable, Problems of Peace, 13th series published by the International Labor 
Office, London 1938.
1. Topical problem even in this country.
2. Recent phenomenon after WWI: Before this a freak: either de nationalité 
indeterminée or denaturalization by US. Both not important, except the only ones which 
are recognized.
3. Important after WWI. 
After WWI: Russia, Armenia, Hungary, Italy, Germany, the Balkans, Spanish Army.
Spread after WWII. India and Arabs: Solution of Jewish homelessness created 
immediately another problem of homelessness.
4. The spread of the evil surprising because of the attention of the statesmen. First: 
Hope that temporary, and therefore Nansen passport: International status under the 
auspices of the League [of Nations].
When it turned out that this is not temporary and that more are to come: No Nansen 
passport. Instead: Attempt to deny the problem[,] ignore it.
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5. The two ways of ignoring:
a) Through legal distinctions: Refugees and stateless: [John Hope] Simpson already 
said for practical purpose every refugee is stateless.
Today we have the same attempt: De facto and de iure stateless people. (Times)
b) “Refugee work must be liquidated with utmost rapidity”.
The second is the consequence of the first: By ignoring statelessness one makes the 
situation much worse for the stateless: He becomes “indesirable”, as the Dutch 
government defined all refugees in a circular letter.
6. The term: Displaced persons tries to eliminate these difficulties: It shows the 
stubbornness to recognize and the deterioriation of status. To change stateless people into 
refugee [people] held out the hope
a) that right of asylum would work
b) that one did not have to bother because this is a matter of charitable organization.
c) resided in wishful hope that this is a temporary phenomenon – a hope one had no 
longer any right to entertain.
ad a) Right to asylum broke down for two reasons: refugees too great in number and most 
of them could not qualify: They had not committed anything. (Example from Armistice 
and UStates) Alternative would have been: Evacuation of all European Jews, then all 
people from Eastern territories, etc.
ad b) Charity is no right, charity should come after justice is done. This as old as the 
hills. To throw them into the lap of charity organizations meant practically: They are 
completely rightless: No right to live in the sense [of] no business to be on the earth.
7. No ill will involved. The two legitimate ways of solving the problem within the 
limitations of national sovereignty were a) Naturalization; b) Repatriation or expulsion.
a) Naturalization: Broke down with exception of UStates which treat their immigrants as 
prospective citizens. Question of apparatus and homogeneous population: Example of 
45,000 Armenians and law of 1936 in Greece.
b) Repatriation or expulsion not possible: The first because country of origin usually 
refused to take him back, the second because he was undeportable. 
8. The whole problem began to turn around the question[:] How to make him 
deportable, as though being deportable is the highest right. Childs, f.i. [for instance] who 
deplores the lack of a right to asylum in UN Charter, finds finally only one solution: 
Internment camps to which one may return him.
9. Internment camps have become the rule, if they are not worse, namely concentration 
camps. Internment camps not supervised by international bodies can become 
concentration camps every minute and are, legally speaking, no longer discernible from 
them: French internment camps for Nazi [refugees], i.e. enemy aliens, but ccs 
[concentration camps] for refugees.
10. Let us now turn to stateless people themselves: best way may be to distinguish them 
and their status – „anomaly for whom there is no appropriate niche in the framework of 
general law” – from a) the criminal b) the enemy alien in times of war. The first 
distinction shows their rigthlessness in terms of domestic law[,] the second in terms of 
international law.
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a) Criminal: what happened to him the consequence of a deliberate act and not at all 
outside the law. The police has a very restricted right to deal with him. He always [has 
the] right to appeal. His punishment is his right and again it is regulated by law. Jail and 
food is given him not out of charity but out of right.
Stateless: No deliberate act necessary, but his mere presence: No right to stay 
anywhere, not in prison either. Except he commits a crime. The normalization. The 
exception for which the rule provides: The criminal in case of law; the genius in case of 
society: Normalization through being an exception to the norm. Very few people in either 
case.
b) Enemy aliens in times of war can be interned according to certain international 
conventions: Their status always supervised and much better than that of refugees whose 
only refuge was – the Légion Etrangère.
11. If we look at it from the point of view of the nations: Enormous influx of people to 
whom no law applies, who have no right to reside, are illegally in the country. Spread of 
lawlessness.
To this corresponds its remedy: They are put under police supervision, but police now 
loses its constitutional character of being only the executor of laws and becomes the 
legislator as well as the executor: It rules over people, acquires subjects, becomes a state 
within the state, a kind of Kingdom.
They finally establish concentration camps, i.e. acquire even a kind of territory, because 
they had the subjects anyhow already.
12. What happens to these people under police rule is no longer the concern of 
anybody: With their citizenship they lost as it were the contact with mankind.
The Nazis who were such legal pedants therefore always were careful to deprive those 
whom they intended to exterminate of their citizenship: First Jews who were deported 
and every Jew who had left the country lost his citizenship (1940); Second: Against 
[Alfred] Rosenberg, that the people of the Eastern occupied territories do not have any 
“staatsangeorigkeit” [Staatsangehoerigkeit] (Trial of Major War Criminals, Nuremberg 
1947, vol. 26, p. 604 Undated Memorandum for the Administration.)
13. Last point: Question of human rights: Obviously should apply when nationality and 
citizen-rights do not function. Yet, the opposite was true: Even the most elementary 
human rights function only as citizen-rights. No international body can supplant because 
of sovereignty. The only inter-nation guaranteed human right could be: No person should 
be rightless, or: No state, no matter how draconic its laws, should have the right to 
deprive of citizenship.
14. For: We live in a world which has been divided, where there are no empty spaces in 
the sense of non-owned spaces. Moreover: We live in a web of international relationships 
where our legal status is portable and we remain under protection no matter where we go. 
Once we lose this protection, it is as though we fall into a void.
If we look at the whole of our human civilization, then the fact of statelessness and our 
incapacity to deal with it shows clearly that there is a danger from within, that lawlessness 
or destruction may come through processes of decay. This could happen only because we 
live already in One World, which means nobody can go anywhere any longer. Those who 
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for whatever purposes propose denaturalization as punishment show only how little they 
know of the conditions and necessities of our century. –
If we ask ourselves what this danger is, the best answer may again be taken from the 
ruthless extremism of Nazi-logics: Foundling is “stateless” as long as his racial belonging 
has not been determined. We know now that stateless means rightless, everything can be 
done, only decency or charity preserve the right to live. Therefore: If we say that every 
human being is born with rights, the Nazis have hit with their definition [crossed out in 
original]
Here our position of human rights reversed: Every man born with inalienable rights. 
Theirs: All men born without any rights. And the right is the right to have rights, this right 
is guaranteed by citizenship. If we do not stop this by having – not a bill with innumerable 
human rights which only the highest civilizations enjoy – but one internationally 
guaranteed right to Citizenship – whatever this citizenship may happen to be –, we shall 
have more and more people who with respect to their legal status no longer are human, 
who have no longer a place within humanity.
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Statelessness

Sievers de Almeida, Vanessa

Ausgabe 1, Band 5 - November 2009
Meeting about Hannah Arendt at the University of São 
Paulo
by Vanessa Sievers de Almeida
On October 1st and 2nd last year the meeting “Hannah Arendt: Education and the 
Modern World” (Hannah Arendt: educação e o mundo moderno) took place at the School 
of Education at the University of São Paulo. The event was organized by a team of 
graduate and undergraduate students engaged in a group dedicated to contemporary 
philosophy and educational studies (Grupo de Estudos Educação e Pensamento 
Contemporâneo), led by Professor Dr. José Sérgio Carvalho. 
During the two-day meeting, approximately 150 participants came together to hear 
about and discuss the work of the philosopher and its possible meanings for an education 
that has a commitment to the common world. The organizers were positively surprised by 
the great interest that the event aroused, which brought together graduate and post-
graduate students, professors and teachers, and people from different areas. 
It should be noted that there is an increasing interest in the work of Hannah Arendt in 
the field of education, in the responsibility to educate the “new ones” to take part in a 
world that we share with others and in the question whether this is still possible when 
“time is out of joint”. These questions certainly stand in opposition to the prevailing 
educational concerns, for instance the contribution of education to technical and 
economical development. The emphasis that Hannah Arendt puts on concepts such as 
“tradition” and “authority”, generally frowned on by educators, also opens new and 
provocative perspectives for the discussion. Perhaps this is the reason why a small-scale 
meeting became a public discussion of much larger proportions. 
One central theme of the meeting was the relationship between politics and education. 
If Arendt, on one hand, resolutely separates the two realms, on the other hand she 
understands the purpose of education to be the introduction of the “new ones” into a 
common world – a world that depends on our political action. In a similar way, concepts 
like “natality”, “authority”, “tradition” and the love for the world that, according to 
Arendt, are related to education have an essentially political meaning.
Prof. Dr. André Duarte (Universidade Federal do Paraná) delivered the opening 
conference “Hannah Arendt and the Interwovenness of the Concepts: the Fine Art of 
Distinguishing and Establishing Relations”. As the title indicates, he approached a 
fundamental theme for the readers of Arendt’s work: the distinctions which the author 
draws between politics and social issues, the private and the public, liberty and necessity, 
etc. According to Duarte each distinction cannot be taken as an immovable borderline, 
but between the opposites exists a kind of relationship, an intersection or some 
communication. Distinguishing and establishing relations between them is a never-
ending task and it depends on the effort of every historic period to define again which 
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issues are, for instance, political ones, i.e. concerns to be discussed and judged by a 
plurality of people involving different points of view.
Prof. Dr. Maria de Fátima Simões Francisco (Universidade de São Paulo) dealt with two 
fundamental concepts in the work of Arendt: thinking and acting, considering the way in 
which Arendt tried to understand this activities referring to the Greek experience. 
More directly concerned with education, Prof. Dr. Adriano Correia (Universidade 
Federal de Goiânia) emphasized the relevance of the “amor mundi” for education, 
speaking about “Natality and amor mundi: about the Tense Relation between Education 
and Politics in the Work of Hannah Arendt”. How can we invite the young people to love 
the world, when being an “animal laborans” is not any more just an unavoidable 
dimension of our existence, but has become the dominant mentality – anti-political in its 
essence?
Prof. Dr. Vanessa Sievers de Almeida (Grupo de Estudos Educação e Pensamento 
Contemporâneo) poses the question how to arouse in students an appreciation of the 
world and how to encourage them to find their place in it in a moment in which 
meaninglessness and the preoccupation with survival are present, so that any 
commitment to the common seems to be an out of place or anachronistic request. 
Nevertheless, education in Arendt’s sense is not possible if we do not try, ever again and 
despite of all, to reconcile ourselves with the human world.
The concept of “natality” represents an important interface between education and 
politics. Prof. Ana Miriam Wuensch (Universidade de Brasília) exposed an approach 
between two philosophers who she called “thinkers of the birth or natality”: Hannah 
Arendt and María Zambrano. She pointed out the coincidence of themes and concepts in 
the works of these contemporaneous authors – birth or natality, the crises of the modern 
world, and its reflexes on the education realm –, although their reflections point at 
different directions.
Prof. Dr. José Sérgio Carvalho (Universidade de São Paulo) asked in which way the 
writings of Walter Benjamin which deal with the impoverishment of experience  – an 
experience that can be transformed into a narrative and so be shared with others – can 
help us understand the crises in education the way Arendt analyses it. Education requires 
the choice of past experiences we wish to transmit. This choice involves political 
decisions, even though education as a whole cannot be understood as political in Arendt’s 
sense.
Prof. Dr. Vandré Gomes da Silva (Grupo de Estudos Educação e Pensamento 
Contemporâneo) used Arendt’s concept of the public in order to analyse the current 
discussion about “quality” in education. He pointed out that educational perspectives 
which are concerned about “quality” generally forget the public dimension of education – 
impossible to be evaluated by means of “quality indicators”.
The presentation of the research projects of the post-graduate and graduate students of 
the group (that organized the meeting) and by Lizandra Andrade Nascimento 
(Universidade Regional Integrada do Alto Uruguai e das Missões) revealed a rich 
spectrum of themes. The latter speaker approached the relation between education and 
politics; Erica Benvenuti deepened the concept of politics in Arendt’s work; Crislei 
Custódio considered the place of public virtues in education; Iris Moser discussed the 
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institutional crisis in education related to the question of authority; Lia Raquel Amaral 
Teixeira presented an Arendtian reading of “The First Man” by Camus; Anyelle 
Giacomalli Lamas dealt with the crisis in education in the context of a consumer society; 
and Ariam J. F. de Castilho Cury discussed the way education is offered in web-sites of 
private schools in São Paulo, mostly being treated as a merchandise. 
Some of the works presented at the event will be published in “Education and 
Research” (Educação e Pesquisa), a journal of the School of Education, University of São 
Paulo. The article “Pedagogical Discourse and the Vanishing of an Ethical-Political 
Meaning of Education” by Prof. Dr. José Sérgio Carvalho can be read on this site.
Finally, it should be noted that the organizing group was very pleased with the various 
contributions and the rich discussions about a theme which its members have been 
dealing with and discussing during its weekly meetings in the School of Education. The 
event not only revealed the increasing interest that the reading of Arendt has achieved in 
the education realm, but also the rising attention that the author’s reflections on 
education has attracted among the scholars who study her work. Those are the reasons 
why there will certainly be more events like this one in the future. 
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Meeting about Hannah Arendt at the University of São Paulo 2009

Richter, Silvia

Ausgabe1, Band 5 – November 2009
Hannah Arendt und die Frankfurter Schule –
eine Tagung am Fritz-Bauer-Institut
Silvia Richter
Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg
(silvia.richter@hfjs.uni-heidelberg.de)
Zum Abschluss der Ausstellung „Die Frankfurter Schule und Frankfurt – eine Rückkehr 
nach Deutschland“ am Jüdischen Museum Frankfurt beschäftigte sich die Tagung 
„Hannah Arendt und die Frankfurter Schule“ am 11.1.2010 in Frankfurt unter der Leitung 
der scheidenden Gastprofessorin des Fritz-Bauer-Instituts Liliane Weissberg (University 
of Pennsylvania), in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Jüdischen Museum Frankfurt, mit dem 
Verhältnis der in New York verbliebenen Vertreterin einer neuen politischen Theorie zu 
der Frankfurter Schule und deren Protagonisten. Dass Arendts Stellung zur Frankfurter 
Schule kontrovers diskutiert wird, wurde bereits im Vorfeld der Tagung deutlich an der 
Reaktion einiger angefragter Teilnehmer: Während Arendts Nachlassverwalter Jerome 
Kohn eine Zusammenführung für widersinnig hielt, da es doch evident sei, dass sie mit 
diesen Leuten – der von ihr betitelten „Schweinebande“ (Arendt an Heinrich Blücher am 
2.8.1941) – nichts zu tun haben wollte, so hielt im Gegenzug Jay Bernstein (New York) die 
Fragestellung für obsolet und verwies auf die bereits vollzogene Situierung Arendts als 
Politologin der Frankfurter Schule.
Die problematische Beziehung Hannah Arendts zur Frankfurter Schule ist verwoben in 
komplexe biographische und werkgeschichtliche Zusammenhänge, die sich an der Frage 
entzünden, wie und weshalb es zu dieser kam? Es war das Verdienst der Tagung, erhel-
lende Schlaglichter in dieses schwierige Verhältnis zu werfen. Im Mittelpunkt standen da-
bei die Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten der politischen Theorien und Begriffe, ihr je-
weiliges Verständnis des Judentums sowie die zentrale Rolle von Leben und Werk Walter 
Benjamins. Vor allem an letzterem schieden sich die Geister, was in Burkhardt Lindners 
(Frankfurt a.M.) Vortrag über Benjamins postume Rückkehr nach Deutschland ersicht-
lich wurde aus Arendts massiver Kritik am Umgang Adornos mit dem Nachlass des ge-
meinsamen Freundes. Lindner wies darauf hin, dass der damalige Streit um Benjamin im 
Kontext von 1968 nicht zu einer Reaktualisierung taugt, d.h. der Marxismus für eine Dis-
kussion des Theorie-Verhältnisses von Arendt und der Frankfurter Schule keine Gret-
chenfrage mehr ist. In Arendts Benjamin-Rezeption, der Lindner eine „elegant verborge-
ne Scheu vor einer intensiven Auseinandersetzung mit Benjamins Schriften“ nachwies, 
bleibt indes ein Rest: Benjamins Messianismus, vor dessen Hintergrund die theoretische 
Konstellation Arendt-Adorno-Benjamin neu zu erörtern bleibt, wobei gerade jenem Text, 
der gewissermaßen die ganze Auseinandersetzung ins Rollen brachte, Benjamins Thesen 
„Über den Begriff der Geschichte“, eine Schlüsselstellung zukommt.   
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Die unterschiedliche Marx-Rezeption Benjamins und Arendts wurde von Annika Thiem 
(Villanova) beleuchtet, indem sie aufzeigte, dass Arendts Lektüre – im Gegensatz zu 
Benjamins – der Frankfurter Schule deutlich entgegengesetzt ist. Arendts Kritik an Marx 
aufnehmend, schlug sie vor, mit Marx Arendt gegen Arendt zu lesen, wobei sie 
unterstrich, dass ökonomische und materielle Fragen der Gesellschaftsordnung bei 
Arendt letztlich ausgeblendet blieben.  
Den zentralen Stellenwert des Machtbegriffs in Arendts politischer Theorie erarbeitete 
Hauke Brunkhorst (Flensburg) eindrucksvoll anhand dessen vielschichtiger Genese. Die 
einzige Macht, an der der Totalitarismus für Arendt scheitern muss, ist die, die dem 
gemeinsamen Handeln der multitudo entspringt. In der gewaltlosen öffentlichen 
Versammlung und im bloßen miteinander reden sieht Arendt, so Brunkhorst, ein 
„ungeheures Machtpotential“, das der imperialen Macht des autoritären Staates 
vergleichbar ist und diese herausfordern kann, wobei er gleichzeitig betonte, dass keine 
Macht ohne einen Bezug auf Gewalt möglich ist. Um Arendts Ideal einer kommunikativen 
Macht umzusetzen, ist vielmehr eine permanente legale Revolution vonnöten, 
konstituiert durch eine herrschaftsbegründende Verfassung.
Eva-Maria Ziege (Seattle) wandte sich in ihrem Beitrag den wegweisenden 
Forschungen Arendts und Adornos im Kontext der Anfänge der Antisemitismusforschung 
zu. Für beide Denker war der deutsche Völkermord an den europäischen Juden zentral 
für ihre Reflexionen über die Gesellschaft. Diese entstanden in intensiver Kooperation 
mit amerikanisch-jüdischen Organisationen als Antwort auf die Eskalation des 
Antisemitismus in Europa und der dadurch erzwungene Emigration jüdischer 
Intellektueller in die USA. Mit ihren Arbeiten, Adornos Studien zum autoritären 
Charakter sowie Arendts Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft, reagierten darüber 
hinaus beide in verschiedener Weise schon früh auf die politischen Konstellationen des 
Kalten Krieges.
Figuren des Widerstands in den politischen Theorien Arendts und Adornos untersuchte 
Ingeborg Nordmann (Frankfurt a.M.), indem sie der von Arendt aufgeworfenen Frage 
„wie man das Schwimmen im Strom überhaupt vermeiden kann“ nachging. Das einzige 
Gegenprinzip, um sich dem totalitären Zwang zu widersetzen, sah Arendt Nordmann 
zufolge in der menschlichen Spontaneität, der Freiheit des Anfangen-Könnens, die eine 
Kontinuität begründet, die nicht unterbrochen werden kann – auch nicht durch den 
Traditionsbruch. Während Adorno die Gestalten des Widerstands als ein Innehalten oder 
Zögern begreift, ein Sein-lassen, das sich dem Aktivismus des Weiter-so verweigert, ist 
Widerstand für Arendt gerade kein Treiben im Strom, sondern ein gegen den Strom 
schwimmen: Der Sinn von Politik ist Freiheit und ihre Essenz die Pluralität der 
Menschen.
Monika Boll, Kuratorin der Ausstellung über die Frankfurter Schule am Jüdischen 
Museum Frankfurt, verglich in ihrem abschließenden Beitrag Arendts und Horkheimers 
Stellung zum Judentum. Arendt kritisierte dessen marxistischen Humanismus als 
politisch naiv und betrachtete die Idee der Assimilation von Anfang an skeptisch. Mit 
ihrer Studie zu Rahel Varnhagen, deren selbst gewähltes Außenseitertum zwischen 
jüdischer Orthodoxie und Assimilation Arendt als Vorbild für ein politisches 
Selbstbewusstsein der Juden in der Moderne sah, appellierte sie an die Juden, Subjekte 
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der eigenen Geschichte zu werden. Für Horkheimer hatte die Suche nach einer spezifisch 
säkularen jüdischen Identität niemals jenen Stellenwert, den sie für Arendt hatte. 
Nachdem der Marxismus für ihn keine Antwort mehr darstellte, kehrte er nach dem Krieg 
zur traditionellen Haltung seines Elternhauses zurück, was sich in einem verstärkten 
Engagement für jüdisches Leben niederschlug.
Sehr zu bedauern war die krankheitsbedingte Absenz von Detlef Claussen (Hannover). 
Zu wünschen bleibt, dass die Diskussion einen fruchtbaren Nachhall findet in der 
Publikation, die für den Herbst 2010 im Wallstein Verlag vorgesehen ist und die noch 
weitere Stimmen aus Frankreich, Israel und den USA versammeln wird.
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Hannah Arendt und die Frankfurter Schule – eine Tagung am Fritz-Bauer-Institut

Ausgabe 1, Band 5 – November 2009 
Vanesa Sievers de Almeida. Amor mundi and education: 
reflections on the thought of Hannah Arendt. 2009. 193f. Tese 
(Doutorado) – Faculdade de Educação, Universidade de São 
Paulo, São Paulo, 2009.
Abstract
This thesis, based on the work of Hannah Arendt, points out the fundamental importance 
which the love of the world has for education. The philosopher explains that we introduce 
the children into the human world through education and shows the impasse that arises 
from the loss of tradition and the disintegration of that common space in the modern age. 
Starting from that problem the central question of this work is: how to arouse in the 
students an appreciation of the world that joins us to different ones and how to encourage 
them to find their place in it in a moment in which meaninglessness and the 
preoccupation with survival impose themselves, so that any commitment to the common 
seems to be an out of place or anachronistic request? Arendt does not propose solutions, 
but is rigorous in asserting that whoever educates is doubly responsible – in education we 
decide whether or not we love the world and its new inhabitants. Since the author does 
not explain what that love is, the notion of amor mundi is investigated having recourse to 
many of her reflections. The understanding achieved – provided that the world is the 
place of human stories where we can establish relations and reveal ourselves as persons – 
is that the love of it is an answer to the totalitarian destruction of that human space and to 
the wordlessness of the modern society organized around the vital process of production 
and consumption. Based on diverse concepts of Arendt, especially on those of action and 
thinking, we approach and discuss the difficult educational task of receiving the younger 
ones into the world, of showing them that, although this place is “out of joint”, it is still 
worth relying on it, and of encouraging them to establish by themselves their singular 
bond with this common space and its legacy, for which they will be responsible in the 
future.
Esta tese assinala, com base na obra de Hannah Arendt, a fundamental importância do 
amor ao mundo para a educação. A filósofa explica que por meio da educação 
introduzimos as crianças no mundo humano e aponta o impasse que surge com a perda 
da tradição e o desmantelamento desse espaço comum na Era Moderna. Partindo desse 
problema, a questão central deste trabalho é: como despertar nos alunos o apreço pelo 
mundo que nos une com os diferentes, encorajá-los a encontrar seu lugar nele num 
momento em que a ausência de sentido e a preocupação com a sobrevivência se impõem, 
de modo que qualquer compromisso com o comum parece ser uma exigência deslocada e 
anacrônica? Arendt não propõe soluções, mas é rigorosa ao afirmar que quem educa é 
duplamente responsável: pelo mundo e pelas crianças – na educação decidimos se 
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amamos o mundo e seus novos habitantes. Posto que a autora não explicita o que vem a 
ser esse amor, investiga-se a noção do amor mundi, recorrendo ao conjunto de suas 
reflexões. Entende-se que, se o mundo é o lugar das histórias humanas no qual podemos 
estabelecer relações e nos revelar como pessoas, o amor a ele é uma resposta à destruição 
totalitária desse espaço humano e ao não-mundo da sociedade moderna organizada em 
torno do processo vital de produção e consumo. Com recurso a diversos conceitos de 
Arendt, principalmente os de ação e pensamento, aborda-se e discute-se a difícil tarefa 
educativa de acolher os jovens no mundo, de mostrar-lhes que, apesar de este lugar estar 
“fora dos eixos”, ainda vale a pena apostar nele, e de encorajá-los para que, por sua vez, 
estabeleçam seu vínculo singular com esse espaço comum e seu legado, pelo qual 
futuramente serão responsáveis.
2 


Amor mundi and education: Reflections on the thought of Hannah Arendt

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Political Responsibility in the Construction of the Public Realm: Reflections Based on Hannah Arendt

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Contingency, History and Narration in Hannah Arendt

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