Abstract

In the theory of Hannah Arendt, the Greek city-state, the Roman Republic and Empire, and the Medieval Church are all paradigmatic political experiences for embracing a remarkable range of members and the substantiating decent orders. The notion of political experience, which primarily is a historical narrative of the well-ordered public sphere, also implicates the effort of the community member to for maintenance. On the basis of three political experiences above, Arendt criticizes the political turbulence and catastrophic changes in the modern times. On the other hand, the tension between philosophy and politics centers her reflection on the political experience as philosophy potentially isolates individual agents from the political community. She holds that Plato initiated this tension by demonizing the political affairs and claiming the individual citizens could fulfill the spiritual ideal merely through personal philosophizing instead of public participation. This thesis construes the Arendtian political experience and the public sphere in temporality and spatiality and with the context of phenomenological tradition and argues that in considering some lethal flaws of overemphasizing the political participation, Arendt in her late years resorts to philosophy for the mental bases that facilitate the political actions. The spatiality of public sphere can be interpreted as the interpersonal relationships in the dialogues over public issues. Similar inspiration comes from Edmund Husserl’s intersubjectivity and Martin Heidegger’s Being-with, but the risk is being fallen in the public opinions. Therefore, Arendt introduces the mental faculty of judgment to distinguish the personal and public views. Arendt is also aware of history and time that are likely to override the human subjectivity in historical narrative and thus introduces the thinking and willing to substantiate the freewill as facilitating the political actions beyond temporality. In this sense, Arendt finally achieves a compromise between philosophy and politics.