Le Tresor Perdu: Hannah Arendt, L'Intelligence de L'Action Politique

At the core of mankind's political life there lies a treasure, now lost. Eighteenth-century revolutionaries could still name it. In America, they called it "public happiness"; in France during the Enlightenment, its name was "civil liberty." Under certain rare and precarious circumstances, this ageless treasure resurfaces in political action undertaken by a group when, as a result, a public space is created in which liberty can thrive. A bond then forms which unfurls a shared world between all people. This is the public good.In evoking this lost treasure, philosopher Hannah Arendt invites us to rediscover, devoid of any pragmatism or moralism, the original meaning of the political action which perceives the world as its condition, as well as its end. The world can be shared only to the extent that actions are political, and such actions are truly political only insofar that their aim is a shared world. Every policy must be viewed in terms of the world that it is likely to establish. Yet don't modern politics condemn us to world alienation? Could the treasure be definitively lost to us?Etienne Tassin, whose PhD is in Philosophy, teaches at Université Paris IX-Dauphine, as well as at École normale supérieure de Cachan. He has co-directed numerous works, among them Jan Patočka. Phénoménologie, philosophie et politique, with Marc Richir (1992), and Le Partage des passions, with P. Vermeren (1992).