Language and meaning in the construction of the public in Arend.

Abstract

Our theme is meaning, as the between or the fitting togetherwithin the public order, in Hanna Arendts The Human Condition.(The Spanish term here, cabe, is hard to translate, it has thesense of both between and of the fit between or within twothings) This theme is clarified by means of an account of the emergenceof possibilities within language itself, and, in addition, oflanguages function as the basis for understanding the political (thepublic). These two elements are presented in terms of a dialecticof the flow of action, which perhaps can also be called the humanexperience of the world.We likewise distinguish between this flowof meaning, this Heraclitean river, and the emergence of meaning,as water emerges from a spring. Our hypothesis es that thethought of Arendt has more the second sense than the first. In thiscase, what is the relation between time and meaning? This questionis the backdrop for our essay in understanding. The lecturedevelops in five sections: in Section I, The Preeminence of Right,examines the connection between the politics of Arendt and thejudgment of Eichmann; Section II, Narrative Identity, examinesthe primacy of the self-justification which a subject constitutes forhimself in a tale and, likewise examines the movement toward ,or the opening of meaning offered by the tale; Section III, ThePublic, examines how intersubjectivity is the common ground forachieving the constitution of ownness, of the sphere of ownness;Section IV, Language, examines the character of language as thebetween, the in the middle of, or fit, in intersubjective relations,as well as in the subjective understanding of the world; finally, inSection V, The Person, we introduce, by way of conclusion, the preeminent the Augustinian thesis concerning the person his natureas hypostasis of being, as between and in himself, regardinghis relation with others; we also indicate the scope and the limitationsof Arendts thesis, in terms of an evaluation from the perspectiveof genetic phenomenology, which studies the political asa thing itself.