JOÃO BORGE CHILELE SALIULO

This doctoral thesis, whose theoretical framework is the philosophy of Alexis de Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt, is concerned with the nature of the experience that the perceiving self has with other beings and with the conditions that make this encounter occur. Hannah Arendt's thinking, taking Tocqueville into account, focuses on the aesthetic-political character of appearance and judgment (both of which have markedly "performative" characteristics) and aims to define the ontological and phenomenological premises of political postures and aggregations, both in action and in judgment. As we shall see, the author understands the political dimension as intrinsic to the human condition. This text also seeks to emphasize the reversibility of action, that is, those who can act can also be acted upon and, in this way, the capacity (to act) is interconnected with susceptibility and vulnerability (to being acted upon). Thus, this article describes the encounter between politics and aesthetics in Arendt's thought, following a guiding and, in fact, main principle: a more bio-aesthetic than anthropological foundation of birth/natality as the arrival and emergence of an individual on the world.