Abstract

This essay explores Hannah Arendt’s thought concerning mass society’s tendency to constrict the appearances of the world. The role that art plays for her is brought into further relief in conjunction with the larger theme of the value of disclosure. Because Arendt’s thought concerning appearance runs on a parallel course to the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, further insight into the experience of art is discovered. The significance of Gadamer’s hermeneutic understanding, as it is exemplified in the experience of art, is owed to the resistance it provides to what Arendt posed as the loss of plurality, spontaneity, worldliness.