Fundação e instituições no pensamento de Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This thesis proposes to discuss the foundation of the secular state’s issue in Hannah Arendt's political theory. Starting from her essay: On Revolution, the author's major work on the subject, we sought to place this object of research within the hermeneutic horizon that emphasizes the foundation and its criticisms of contemporary legal and political institutions. It is worth highlighting that the relationship between the foundation and constitutional authenticity has received little attention from Arendt intellectuals than those who explore its agonistic dimension, given that, until then, the creator was recognized as an early thinker and not as an author of order and institutional stability. To do so, the theme will be approached through three concepts: that of authority, relating it to the theme of power and the process of secularization typical of modernity; that of freedom, understood in its political dimension of the foundational action, and that of the Constitution and conservation as a specific form of institutional realization implied in the idea of rupture included in the debates on the nature of revolutionary acts. At the same time, it is intended to show how this subject place the issue of Law at the centre of the author's line of thinking, going against the readings that emphasize the institutional dimension of Arendt's conception. Understanding the meaning of this theoretical démarche has much to gain when it is introduced into the analysis of the proposed theme from a perspective of the rule of law by problematizing the postulates of law and the politics that underlie them, such as submission to the rule of law, the division of powers, the creation of constitutions, the guarantee of individual rights and, mainly, a political statute given only by the public space. In this way, it is observed that a procedural structure enables the contention between institutions and political action, which is why the founding principles are embodied in the Constitution, which will represent both the established and instituting forces in the action and preservation of political freedom. This allows us to conclude that strengthening the active participation of citizens is balanced with the institutions and principles founded and agreed in the Constitution and also shows the limits and possibilities that provide and expand the place of “acting in concert” in the Democratic State of Law.