Abstract

OSORIO GOMEZ, Felipe. Hannah Arendt and the search for the individual in the nation-state. Rev. Lasallista Investig. [online]. 2010, vol.7, n.1, pp.100-115. ISSN 1794-4449.

This text is a part of a work that aims to divulge the legal elements contained in Hannah Arendt’s work. Specifically, in The origins of totalitarianism, she considers the modern nation/state as the institution in which the elements that consolidate totalitarianism as a sui generis government form, begin to appear. The elevation of the nation/state and the power it is given to provide the recognition, the rights and the liberties to individuals, are evaluated by this author from the philosophical and political points of view. This work, however, also explores these concepts from a legal perspective, in the theoretical re-construction of the concept "individual" as a political subject. This is done by the use of three models that provide enough elements to conceptualize and contextualize the history of the ages in which the existence of the individual is framed. Those models are: Historicist, located in the Middle Ages, individualist, framed in the Modern Age until the revolutions for rights that took place in the XVlll century, and statist, developed from elements taken from the individualist model. This path is traversed in order to evaluate the coherence and pertinence of Arendt's asseverations from a legal perspective and to make a critic to the modern nation-state, seen from the totalitarian phenomenon.

Keywords : Law; Nation-state; Middle Ages; Modern Age; totalitarianism; individual.

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