In Search for Hannah Arendt‘s Miracle in the Political and Natural Liberty of Arvydas Šliogeris

Abstract

The article analyzes two conceptions of freedom, the political and the anti-political, in the philosophy of Arvydas Šliogeris. The author of the article argues that even the anti-political freedom of self-sufficiency ultimately unfolds within a political condition. The paper highlights the distinction between Šliogeris’s political philosophy and his philosophy of Being, emphasizing the contrast between the philosopher’s ideal of pure Being in a pre-linguistic reality and the linkage of freedom with property within the political condition. Šliogeris’s conceptions of freedom are presented in a broader theoretical context comparing them with the notions of freedom developed by Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt. In addition, Šliogeris’s understanding of political freedom as embedded in the political condition as well as his conception of natural arbitrariness is compared with the corresponding notions found in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. The article also presents selected examples of Šliogeris’s photographs as symbolic representations of his philosophical ideas of ontological meditation.