What is it about?
Hannah Arendt says political founding is associated with the human experience of birth. But her own work suggests a different association. She praises Roman poet Virgil for understanding founding best. Virgil’s work in turn is all about death and how it drives or necessitates renewal. Arendt’s view of founding is therefore more complex than she presents and must make some place for death.
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Why is it important?
The idea that political origins are a function purely of birth and innovation creates a sanitized view of founding and leaves out the dimensions of loss and violence.
Perspectives
A young child in my neighbourhood went missing while I was writing an early draft of this paper. He was found dead (a simple accident) shortly after. I finished this work after attending the neighbourhood vigil for this boy. The final analysis of the work, and indeed the final line of the paper, I owe to witnessing the impact of his loss.
Catherine Frost
McMaster University
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This page is a summary of: Birth, death and survival: sources of political renewal in the work of Hannah Arendt and Virgil’s Aeneid, Mortality, October 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2017.1377167.
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