The manifestation of freedom as a 'productive politics'”

Abstract

This thesis aims to provide an insight to the concept of freedom through an integration of Marx's and Arendt's systems. The investigation will begin with Arendt's distinction between the concepts of labor and work in order to come to a criticism of Arendt's criticism of Marx regarding the concept of labor. The next step will be an explication of the concept of world as a man-made world of things with which the human beings come into relation in instrumental terms, and as a space of appearance which provides the possibility of transcending necessity and utility. This analysis will be used to expound upon Marx's notion of self-alienation and Arendt's notion of world-alienation which will then be linked to Marx's analysis of the fetishism of commodities in order to bring Arendt and Marx together in their critical approach to the instrumentalization of necessities. The last part will be devoted to an attempt of reading Arendt's concept of political action through Marx's concept of self-actualization in order to join the human capacities of action and production. In the end, it will be argued that this integration reveals what I call “producing meaning,” which brings about the manifestation of freedom as a productive politics.