Name: Edson Kretle dos Santos
Type: PhD thesis
Publication date: 25/09/2023
Advisor:

Name	Role
Daniel Arruda Nascimento	Advisor *

Examining board:

Name	Role
Adriano Correia Silva	External Examiner *
Daniel Arruda Nascimento	Advisor *
JOSÉ LUIZ DE OLIVEIRA	External Examiner *
MARIA CRISTINA MULLER	External Examiner *
Ricardo Corrêa de Araujo	Internal Examiner *

Summary: .This thesis proposes to discuss the foundation of the secular state’s issue in Hannah Arendt's
political theory. Starting from her essay: On Revolution, the author's major work on the subject,
we sought to place this object of research within the hermeneutic horizon that emphasizes the
foundation and its criticisms of contemporary legal and political institutions. It is worth
highlighting that the relationship between the foundation and constitutional authenticity has
received little attention from Arendt intellectuals than those who explore its agonistic
dimension, given that, until then, the creator was recognized as an early thinker and not as an
author of order and institutional stability. To do so, the theme will be approached through three
concepts: that of authority, relating it to the theme of power and the process of secularization
typical of modernity; that of freedom, understood in its political dimension of the foundational
action, and that of the Constitution and conservation as a specific form of institutional
realization implied in the idea of rupture included in the debates on the nature of revolutionary
acts. At the same time, it is intended to show how this subject place the issue of Law at the
centre of the author's line of thinking, going against the readings that emphasize the institutional
dimension of Arendt's conception. Understanding the meaning of this theoretical démarche has
much to gain when it is introduced into the analysis of the proposed theme from a perspective
of the rule of law by problematizing the postulates of law and the politics that underlie them,
such as submission to the rule of law, the division of powers, the creation of constitutions, the
guarantee of individual rights and, mainly, a political statute given only by the public space. In
this way, it is observed that a procedural structure enables the contention between institutions
and political action, which is why the founding principles are embodied in the Constitution,
which will represent both the established and instituting forces in the action and preservation
of political freedom. This allows us to conclude that strengthening the active participation of
citizens is balanced with the institutions and principles founded and agreed in the Constitution
and also shows the limits and possibilities that provide and expand the place of “acting in
concert” in the Democratic State of Law.

Keywords: Foundation. Hannah Arendt. Authority. Freedom. Constitution.