Modernity, Nation-state and Human Rights in Hannah Arendt

Abstract

The modernity, nation-state, and humanity are closely interrelated with each other. All works by her are based on the criticism of the modernity. She characterized the marks of modern illness as the worldlessness in spiritual aspect, the uprootedness and superfluosness in social one, fatal vulnerabilities of nation-state in political one, and the loss of human dignity in agential one.Through the quarrel with Western modernity, she had theoretical efforts to revitalize the public realm, to overcome the exclusiveness of nation-state, and to improve the human dignity. In a word, her criticisms would contribute to establish the meaning of freedom, which can be realized by the practice of the amor mundi. The Arendtian solution gives us the vision to introduce the new politics of twenty-first century.