Melancholy of Progress: the Image of Modernity and the Time-Related Structure of the Mind in Arendt’s Late Work .

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Abstract

[In English]

In the first of her lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy Arendt writes that for the Philosopher the concept of progress contained an inherent melancholy, for its full application would preclude the possibility of contentment. Having in mind Arendt’s own, consistent critique of the notion and of the related process-like image of history we can ask the question: was not progress for Arendt a rather melancholy idea? But then – in what sense of the semantically rich term might we speak about melancholy when associating it with progress? Hence, in which way could the concept of melancholy enlighten our understanding of the idea of progress? All this has to do with Arendt’s understanding of Modernity. First, the «innerwordly alienation» that in its various forms stands at its beginning is a form of a melancholic dissociation from the world. Second, homo faber, a figure of Modernity par excellence: lonely and detached from his fellow human beings, seems to be marked by the melancholic boredom. And progress belongs only to production, not to action. The metaphysical fallacy of representing the realm of the human affairs in the image of making is Arendt’s known and constant adversary. So is progress. In her late work Arendt attempted to develop what we may call, using her early expression, the formal structure of existence – of the mental activities in this respect, the human condition(s) of possibility. These were interestingly bound to different dimensions of time, not without its complications, especially in regard to willing and the future. Would constant projecting of one’s self onto the future necessarily entail the irremediable sense of loss of the present, and therefore – depression? Would it be a lack in the self containing the whole of the present self? And was not the present time, or the gap in-between the dimension of time of the superior importance for Hannah Arendt? In which way therefore was she to deal with the melancholy of the will, the faculty she undoubtedly praised? These are the problems I would like to address in my paper.