Surrealpolitik: Political Reconciliation

Quick Summary

Some interesting points, actually mainly drawn from Arendt, about how plurality defines political reality, multiple viewpoints creating and contesting reality and establishing common "consensus" reality; how this presents a challenge to totalitarianism, which seeks to limit plurality; and how frail it all is, how it can vanish.

Quotes

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[W]e depend on plurality for our sense of the reality and worth of things. Our feeling for reality depends upon the disclosure of the world as an object held in common but perceived from a multitude of perspectives. The commonness of the world is not merely revealed, then, but is constituted by contesting reality through political interaction...[T]he totalitarian impulse is driven by a resentment of plurality and the frustrations it leads to in politics...The common world that is disclosed through politics is frail because its realization depends upon the 'unreliable and only temporary agreement of many wills and intentions' (HC:201). Because the space of appearances exists only so long as people act and speak together, it can vanish as suddenly as it springs up (HC:199-201); (page )
Tags: [Truth & Real]