Philip Strammer: The Appearance of Goodness in the Public Realm

Organized by the Department of Modern Rationality

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Philip Strammer (University of Pardubice):
The Appearance of Goodness in the Public Realm

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt claims that, due to its unworldly nature, absolute goodness cannot appear in the world, specifically not in the public realm which, for Arendt, is the locus of worldliness per se. I take issue with this view by problematising Arendt’s explications in The Human Condition and Love and Saint Augustin. I then turn to an example by Christopher Cordner in which he, in contrast to Arendt, emphasises the experience of being struck by absolute goodness in a way that claims one in testimony to what one has witnessed. Drawing from Cordner, I conclude by reconceptualising the relation between goodness and publicness with a focus on the notion of the spirit in which public debate may be conducted.