Truth, Plurality, and Political Phenomenology: Hannah Arendt’s Socrates

This paper examines Hannah Arendt’s Socrates. I argue that Arendt construes Socrates as a model of the compatibility of philosophy and politics. This model uniquely articulates this compatibility through a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, where truth is conceived as a perspectival disclosure of meaning in the plural and discursive world of politics. I further contend that the more solitary features of Arendt’s Socrates (thinking as internal dialogue, and speechless wonder) also contribute to the political realm as a site of truth.