Conceptions of the political: between Schmitt and Arendt

Ibrahimy, Babrak (2016) Conceptions of the political: between Schmitt and Arendt. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis aims to answer the question ‘What is the political?’ While much has been written on individual conceptions of ‘the political’, the main aim of this thesis was to conduct a comparative research between different conceptions of the political. In particular, the thesis presents the conceptions of the political by Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, and Chantal Mouffe, and analyses in what sense and where their conceptions differ. In doing so, three aims were set as a framework of comparison: 1) to clarify the relation between politics and the political; 2) to question the dissociative and associative traits of the political; and 3) to shed light on the relation between the notion of humanity and the concept of the political. The main conclusions drawn as a result of this research are thus also threefold: 1) the relation between the political and politics should not amount to privileging of the former, and contra contemporary emphasis on a political ontology, Schmitt and Arendt do not envision the political in these terms – instead, their conceptions of the political serve as a desired state of politics; 2) any actual association is one that functions according to the logic of democratic exclusion, whereby the distinction between associative and dissociative traits of the political become superfluous; and 3) utilising the notion of humanity, Schmitt and Arendt aim to overcome the restrictive imposition of the political, while Mouffe embraces the democratic principle of exclusion. The concluding chapter aims to bring together the findings of individual scholars and to pave way for a concept of the political that integrates the individual elements found in each scholar.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Philosophy (former - to 2014)
Depositing User:	Users 9280 not found.
Date Deposited:	24 May 2017 13:02
Last Modified:	24 Jan 2021 01:38
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/63602
DOI:

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