Hannah Arendt’s Challenge to Critical Phenomenology: Critique from the General Conditions of Natality and Plurality

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues for the continued relevance of general, transcendental structures – especially Hannah Arendt’s concepts of natality and plurality – within critical phenomenology. Contrary to recent thinkers like Guenther, Oksala, Herrmann, and Marder, who critique the general as inherently oppressive and/or irrelevant, I propose that general conditions can provide a foundation for political critique when examined alongside sociohistorical conditions and individuals’ situatedness within them. Through a close reading of Arendt’s The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem , I show how modern alienation obscures the fundamental human conditions of natality and plurality, fostering loneliness that feeds into totalitarianism. An Arendtian critical phenomenology that acknowledges generality without forsaking situatedness offers greater explanatory power and relevance in the Trump era, where the erosion of natality and plurality further endangers an already compromised democratic life.