Key Arguments

• Society’s ascent diminished the distinctness and vitality of the public and private spheres at once.
• The loss of a shared public world fosters the ‘lonely mass man’ and enables worldless ideological mass movements.
• This eclipse originated in a tangible economic-political change: deprivation of private property, the individual’s share in the world.

Source Quotes

For men cannot become citizens of the world as they are citizens of their countries, and social men cannot own collectively as family and household men own their private property. The rise of society brought about the simultaneous decline of the public as well as the private realm. But the eclipse of a common public world, so crucial to the formation of the lonely mass man and so dangerous in the formation of the worldless mentality of modern ideological mass movements, began with the much more tangible loss of a privately owned share in the world.

The rise of society brought about the simultaneous decline of the public as well as the private realm. But the eclipse of a common public world, so crucial to the formation of the lonely mass man and so dangerous in the formation of the worldless mentality of modern ideological mass movements, began with the much more tangible loss of a privately owned share in the world.

Key Concepts

• The rise of society brought about the simultaneous decline of the public as well as the private realm.
• But the eclipse of a common public world, so crucial to the formation of the lonely mass man and so dangerous in the formation of the worldless mentality of modern ideological mass movements, began with the much more tangible loss of a privately owned share in the world.

Context

Section 35, WORLD ALIENATION (lines 5023–5046); Arendt links structural social changes to mass loneliness and ideological worldlessness, locating the origin in expropriation of private property.