Singularity, Duality, Plurality: On Thoughtlessness, Friendship and Politics in Hannah Arendt's Work

2022
English
During October 1953, Hannah Arendt made a short list, divided into two columns, which represents what she sought to move away from, singularity, and what she was moving towards, plurality. Like any list, it remains somewhat incomplete. Yet, taken as an outline, it displays a conceptual framework which she would draw on in most of her subsequent works: Under singularity she highlights, among other concepts, labor, loneliness, oneness and mortality, while plurality is characterized by equality, speech, action, the two-in-one, power and natality. As we shall see, the column of singularity could be widened to include concepts, such as tyranny, totalitarianism and thoughtlessness, which all tend toward, according to Arendt, the sort of oneness, in which almost all differences and distinctions are wiped out.


