Hannah Arendt – An Ethics of Personal Responsibility

Arendt understands morality not in terms of maxims or moral principles, neither in their abstract nor in their relativistic acceptation. There is an original question raised by Arendt that has not been taken seriously enough. This question has powerful moral implications, for it directs us to choose our «company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past». This book is concerned with an ethics based on the visibility of our words and deeds, in which, apart our intentions, appearance is ethically relevant. In the ethics of personal responsibility stands a fundamental dimension of choice able to bridge the self and the world, consciousness and experience. This ethics takes into account three levels of responsibility: responsibility towards ourselves, or how we make our presence in the world; responsibility to judge; and responsibility to the world through the consistency of our actions.