Abstract

This article aims to highlight a tension, an aporia, around which Hannah Arendt builds the main concepts of her political thought. The definition of totalitarianism as a society of immanence and movement will be the starting point of the analysis. I will then consider how Arendt builds her idea of politics, in opposition to the totalitarian model, on both breakthrough of novelty and permanence. As I will show, the same tension runs through the concepts of power and freedom. Finally, I will consider the idea of foundation, in which this aporia emerges even more clearly, by asking whether this concept can represent both the failure and the point of greatest interest in Arendt’s thought