Approaches to Hannah Arendt’s Political Thought: Resignifying action in contemporary times

Abstract

This article stems from the reflections developed by the research group “Contemporary Readings of Political Theory,” affiliated with the Political Studies Group at the Universidad Surcolombiana (Neiva, Huila, Colombia). It is grounded in a state-of-the-art analysis aimed at examining Hannah Arendt’s political conceptions, the reception of her thought in South America between 2018 and 2021, and its relevance to contemporary political studies. The central objective of this work is to conceptually clarify the category of politics and propose a critical reading that allows for a reconsideration of its implications from an Arendtian perspective. The research adopts a critical-hermeneutic approach to analyzing Arendt’s work and its interpretation in various contexts, particularly in South America. Based on this, fundamental categories such as action, work, labor, the public sphere, plurality, and freedom are examined. The results demonstrate the relevance of Arendtian thought in current political debates, highlighting the need to revitalize a transcendental politics that affirms the public sphere as a space of emergence and liberation, where action transcends the instrumental to affirm its transformative dimension. In the face of the crisis of representations and the hollowing out of the meaning of the political, this analysis seeks to contribute to the recovery of the meaning of political action and to the strengthening.