Heidegger to Arendt

To appreciate the human world, you have to withdraw from it. And this is a transition is a movement that keeps going for those who are fond of both Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. From Arendt's perspective, Heidegger broke from the human world to what was, for him, most authentic--a relationship with one's existence, which entails contemplating one's own death, as well as the ontological boundaries that frame our (radically individuated) human experience.

What Arendt saw in Heidegger's thinking of his most intimate, individuated experience, his journey to the ontological core, was a tragic flee from the human world. For her, the world cannot simply be left on its own, it needs vigilant care. Her return to the world, which for her is nothing else but the human world, is influenced greatly by the holocaust and other political disasters of the last century, when human evil was on display. To sustain a polis, to ensure that it does not disappear or become distorted into a playing field for the will of a single man, is the work of many- and the work of the free mind.