Société de travailleurs et dérive du politique vers le totalitarisme chez Simone Weil et Hannah Arendt

Does the emergence of economic activity in the public sphere mean that it is possible to make a distinction between the private sphere and the public sphere ? For Hannah Arendt, the answer is no. What totalitarian regimes have homogenised is not the private sphere and the public sphere, but private life and public life. As she explains, the condition for the existence of a true public space, i.e. a political space, is freedom from worrying about the necessities of life, be it work or on a economic level. Simone Weil proposes another approach to the problem. While she agrees with Hannah Arendt on the causes and effects of totalitarianism, for Simone Weil the predominance of economic activity or work in modern society does not necessarily threaten the existence of a genuine political-public space. For both authors, the public sphere (political) and the private sphere (economic) must be rigorously defined, but while Arendtian metaphysics favour the public sphere, Weilian determinism enables us to reflect more on the private sphere. Thus, in spite of totally divergent metaphysical standpoints, both of them not only oppose Marx, but also another phenomenon -the socialisation of economic activity.