Hannah Arendt és a közvetlen demokrácia problémája
Hannah Arendt and the Problem of Participative Democracy

Summary/Abstract: This paper attempts to be an inquiry of Hannah Arendt’s vision on participative democracy, a vision which was elaborated on the last pages of her work, On revolution. Of course, one may say that the concept of participative democracy doesn’t seem to be very important for the understanding of Arendt’s political thinking, but I see things differently. I am strongly convinced that this concept of participative democracy (closely related to that of self-government) is an important part, a key element of Arendt’s vision about democracy, a vision which emerges from the criticism of representative democracy and party system. Arendt (in many of her books) had major objections against party system, mostly because she thought that the parties are not (and could not be) representative. Only the interests of voters can be represented, she thought, their opinion can not. So the present system of representative democracy must be substituted with another political arrangement, a democratic regime in which the equals could faces the equals, in which the politics is not less then peaceful dialogue between equals – an ideal of politics inherited from the Greek antiquity and placed by Arendt in the very heart of her political thinking.

• Details
• Contents