Presents a collection of essays and previously unpublished writings that look at the philosophical aspects of political science, including Marxian philosophy.

My claim is that Arendt founds the 'right to have rights' in the anarchic event of natality. Arendt is very explicit that the event of natality is an ontological event. In The Human Condition, she writes: "The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal "natural" ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted." At the same time, she is equally insistent that this ontological event is not (...) metaphysical; it is not the origin of anything like human nature: "To avoid misunderstanding, the human condition is not the same as human nature and the sum total of human activities and capabilities which correspond to the human condition do not constitute anything like human nature". Indeed, this event has the character of a "startling unexpectedness." Natality, she argues, is the condition for human existence, but it can never "…explain what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that [it] can never condition us absolutely". The 'who' does not possess an enduring, fixed nature, but is instead inherently marked by contingency and unpredictability. Arendt's ontology, therefore, does not describe an immutable order of essences; it does not seek enduring truths upon which to ground both thought and action; it does not posit a metaphysical notion of human nature or subjectivity in which human rights are inalienably inscribed. Instead, it is rooted in an unpredictable, anarchic event that provides the arche and principium of human action. For Arendt, the event of natality is the arche in the double etymological sense of origin and rule. In other words, natality is the unpredictable, anarchic origin that carries its rule or principle within it. As she points out in On Revolution, "What saves the act of beginning from its own arbitrariness is that it carries its own principle within itself or, to be more precise, that beginning and principle, principium and principle, are not only related to each other, but are coeval." Arendt goes on to argue: "For the Greek word for beginning is arche, and arche means both beginning and principle." By articulating this principium, Arendt does not give us an ontological politics; rather, she provides an ontological foundation for human rights. (shrink)

El artículo analiza la relación de proximidad y distancia que existe entre los pensamientos de Hannah Arendt y de Inmanuel Kant. La idea de voluntad es la clave hermenéutica de dicha contrastación. Se intenta esclarecer cómo la indeterminación del estatuto teórico de la idea de voluntad en Arendt entraña un punto de inflexión en el examen de la conflictiva relación que Arendt establece con Kant: Tal controversia se refiere a los límites de la Razón Práctica. Finalmente, el análisis se centra (...) tanto en la propuesta arendtiana de pensar la voluntad como facultad política así como en su enigmática conexión con la idea de espontaneidad de Kant. (shrink)