Tragedy, Solidarity, and Impartiality. The Meaning of Hannah Arendt’s Thinking for Our Narrational Identity

The aim of the article is to outline the meaning of the tragic component of action in Hannah Arendt’s theory of politics, and to relate it to the problem of modern storytelling and historiography by means of the concepts of solidarity and impartiality. Tragedy, inalienably connected with suffering, is the inherent, although not always conspicuous, feature of action in Arendt’s thought. It comes to the fore more often through the quotations of poetry or poetic historiography than in the conceptual framework of Arendt’s oeuvre. Therefore, the interpretation of the tragic component of action in Arendt requires tracing these citations and linking them to the Arendtian conceptual framework. But there is more to it: such an interpretation is fulfilled only if it informs and inspires our critical consciousness concerning our own narrations and identities.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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