Critique of the Naturalistic Thesis of Human Life: A Dialogue with Hannah Arendt

Abstract

From Hobbes to the new neuroscience there is a continuity which tends to naturalize politics by their reducing it to the governance of human nature, converting it to biopolitics. In this context, violence becomes an unavoidable natural instinct that must be managed politically. Countering the naturalism of violence, and following some critical clues opened by Hannah Arendt, we can distinguish between aggressiveness and violence. Aggressiveness is natural but violence is intentional (symbolic). It exists as an ethical negation of otherness and not as decisive impulse of nature. Thus memory transcends mere natural functionality to be instituted as a neutralizing power of violence.