Silvia Zappulla

Abstract

This paper is aimed at demonstrating the political nature of the history in the Arendt’s view. The author in fact considers the history and the other languages of the human narration as means to never forget human actions. Human actions, in their turn, are the concrete signs of the human existence in the world: thus they are political, since they involve the plural and social nature of the human beings. The concept of history in Arendt can be conceived as based on the importance of the particular lives of the single human beings. She does not believe in a cosmic story where the individuals are sacrificed to the big and impersonal events. For Arendt, the importance of the individual stories is deeply important, as she believes in a new foundation of politics, where everybody is represented. Therefore, to read the human history as a narration of the individual lives leads to a new foundation of politics and to the pluralism.

Silvia Zappulla obtained her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Siena (in 2010), after a MA in philosophy at the University of Catania (2005) and a postgraduate specialization in Aesthetics (2007) at the University of Florence. In 2009, she held a visiting academic position at the “Hannah Arendt Centre for Ethical and Political Thinking” of the Bard College (USA) and was visiting fellow at the New School for Social Research (New York, USA). Her research activity and academic papers focus on Aesthetics, Political Theory, Tragic Thought and Hannah Arendt, among other things. Her teaching experience covers History of Aesthetics and Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. Her research papers have been accepted for presentation in international academic conferences in Italy and abroad and are currently under consideration for publication in peer-reviewed Italian and international journals. Her PhD thesis (on the legacy of the Greek tragedy to Hannah Arendt’s philosophy) is under revision to be published as a book.