Education, Mortality and Natality in Hannah Arendt

Abstract

We start from the question identified by Hannah Arendt in relation to Western thought, which is the deep relation between philosophy and mortality. We clarify the impacts of this centrality on common life in general and on education in particular, starting from the analysis of this affinity between mortality and philosophy in authors such as Plato, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Heidegger. To understand and overcome this relationship, Arendt creates and consolidates the notion of birth as the core of philosophy and, as a consequence, of education. We analyze how the birth is combined with education as Arendt understands. Thus, we describe how education is affected by the birth notion against the backdrop of the theory of action described in the book The Human Condition. It is a bibliographic research methodology that aims to highlight the philosophical conflict between mortality and birth and to clarify its impacts on the Arendtian conception of Education.