Tragedy, comedy and history in On revolution

ARESE, LAURA

European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology

Routledge

Lugar: Oxon; Año: 2014 vol. 1 p. 234 - 248

2325-4823

This article explores the role of tragedy and comedy as hermeneutic perspectives present in some passages of Hannah Arendt´s thought. The first claim is that, as a hermeneutic device applied to the understanding ofhistory, tragedy can be a key to interpreting On Revolution. TheAristotelian concept of mimesis and the characteristics of tragic theatre setout in Poetics are important sources of this approach. Secondly, the articleexamines the sardonic tone that Arendt uses at the end of the first chapterof On Revolution, where she accuses the protagonists of the bloodiest phaseof the Russian Revolution of being the "fools of history". Some suggestionsare made regarding the meaning of this comedic key, which reappears, notcoincidentally, in another of the philosopher?s most important historicalanalyses: Eichmann in Jerusalem.