According to Hannah Arendt, plurality is a key concept of politics:

“Politics is based on the fact of human plurality. God created man, but men are a human earthly product, the product of human nature. Because philosophy and theology are always concerned with man, because all their pronouncements would be correct if there were only one or two men or only identical men, they have found no valid philosophical answer to the question: What is politics?” (Arendt 2005, p. 93)

Gómez Ramos evaluates Arendt’s idea on the role of plurality: “[…] Hannah Arendt emphasizes how important it is to understand the notion of plurality and its place at the core of this uniquely human activity. Politics as such, she writes, is based on the fact that there are men, not Man, and that every individual human being is distinct and unique. There is not the singular Man, but rather human beings in the plural. It is from this original plurality that political action takes place.” (Gómez Ramos 2022, p. 3)

Further articles on Arendt’s notion on plurality can be found in Hannah Arendt: Challenges of Plurality (2022), edited by Maria Robaszkiewicz and Tobias Matzner, which is part of our international Springer Book Series on Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, edited by Ruth E. Hagengruber, Mary Ellen Waithe and Gianenrico Paganini.

If you are interested in Hannah Arendt, please find Scholars from our New Voices network.

For our Libori Summer School 2018, Arendt expert Elizabeth Minnich held a Master Class on “Hannah Arendt Today: The Evil of Banality”. For more insights click here:

See also an interview between Ruth E. Hagengruber and Elizabeth Minnich on Hannah Arendt’s response to the 75 years anniversary of the End of the Nazi Regime

We also present two Conversations with Diotima on Hannah Arendt, as well as various lectures by Ruth E. Hagengruber on Hannah Arendt:

Conversations with Diotima. Rodney Parker and Sophie Loidolt on Hannah Arendt (2017)

Conversations with Diotima. Rodney Parker and Elizabeth Minnich on Hannah Arendt (2018)

Online Teaching Ruth E. Hagengruber on Hannah Arendt (2018), Part 1

Online Teaching Ruth E. Hagengruber on Hannah Arendt (2018), Part 2

Online Teaching Ruth E. Hagengruber on Taylor-Mill, Stein and Arendt (2011/2)

References

Arendt, H. (2005). Introduction ‘into’ Politics. In J. Kohn (Ed.),The Promise of Politics (pp. 93–200). New York: Schocken.

Gómez Ramos, Antonio. (2022). Plurality and the Claims of Alterity. In: Robaszkiewicz, M., Matzner, T. (Eds.) Hannah Arendt: Challenges of Plurality, pp. 3-19. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81712-1_1 

Robaszkiewicz, Maria & Matzner, Tobias. (Eds.) (2022). Hannah Arendt: Challenges of Plurality. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81712-1