Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Political Action covers a wide spectrum of Arendt’s works in providing a framework for her theory of political action. Tchir draws upon a range of thinkers such as Heidegger Kant Augustine and Montesquieu who influenced aspects of Arendt’s theory and upon those thinkers whom Arendt explicitly criticized such as Marx to demonstrate how she both breaks with the tradition of western political thought and recollects and revises some of the concepts within that tradition in order to re-conceptualize “political action” in the modern age of secular politics. Thus Tchir also highlights how Arendt transforms and revises aspects of others’ philosophies in significant ways when she does borrow from them. Moreover his inclusion of commentary and criticisms of Arendt’s approach to political action by numerous contemporary thinkers helps him to illuminate the tensions within the Arendt’s thought and to delineate his own thesis and argument. However much of his book is devoted to an exegesis and interpretation of Arendt’s diverse works in respect to her theory of political action.