Zhangmei Tang (Mei @Exeter): Hannah Arendt's Critique of Modernity in Light of Roman Political Thought

Without denying that Arendt’s identity and her indebtedness to Greek antiquity and Heidegger’s critique of modern technology have gained her original perspective on modernity, I will add the relatively marginal Roman factor into the scholarship, and try to prove that Rome is the constructive moment of her political endeavour and her departure from Heidegger.I will trace how Arendt turns to the historical-political situation of the Roman Republic because it faced similar crises to that of modernity in which the thread of ‘tradition, authority and religion’ was broken.