Totalitarianism and Existence - Contribution to the Understanding of Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Personal Responsibility Cover Image

Totalitarizam i egzistencija - Prilog razumijevanju pojma osobne odgovornosti kod Hanne Arendt
Totalitarianism and Existence - Contribution to the Understanding of Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Personal Responsibility

Author(s): Boško Pešić
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Hrvatsko Filozofsko Društvo
Keywords: Hannah Arendt; personal responsibility; predicament of judgment; existence; totalitarianism

Summary/Abstract: If the responsibility is understood as a satisfying response to man’s situation, and if we at least partially remove such a notion from the paradigmatic legal and ethical pattern, then we could easily enter into its completely different semantic field with a theoretical discourse largely due to Hannah Arendt. The concept of personal responsibility that especially becomes apparent in this process Arendt opposes to the notion of political responsibility, in a range from collective innocence to collective guilt. In fact, the personal responsibility in question is based on the power of judgment. The predicament of judgment, as Arendt calls it, happens when its power is not rooted in generally adopted codes of conduct. Man as existence then inexorably approaches a special test of his authenticity. The central issue discussed in this article is thus the following: how much the personal responsibility represents a key to the philosophical understanding of existence, especially regarding the non-triviality of contemporary difficulties in identifying new signs of raising totalitarianisms.

  • Issue Year: 33/2013
  • Issue No: 04/132
  • Page Range: 659-665
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Croatian