Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 33 No. 4, 2013.
Review article
Totalitarianism and Existence. Contribution to the Understanding of Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Personal Responsibility
Boško Pešić
orcid.org/0000-0002-7010-0803
; Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište J. J. Strossmayera u Osijeku, Hrvatska
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.
Keywords
Hannah Arendt; personal responsibility; predicament of judgment; existence; totalitarianism
Hrčak ID:
118576
URI
Publication date:
3.3.2014.
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