MODERNIDADE E ALIENAÇÃO DO MUNDO EM HANNAH ARENDT

This article presents some aspects of Hannah Arendt’s critique of modernity. The main reasons of Arendt’s claim that the hallmark of modernity is world alienation are shown here. The origins of this alien-ation are to be found in the three events that stand at the threshold of modern age: the discovery of America, the Reformation and, most im-portantly, the invention of the telescope and the subsequent philosophy of Descartes. After showing the different kinds of alienation related to each one of these events, and specially the role played by science within this process, I present some contemporary implications of this aliena-tion in order to put forward a hypothesis according to which, from an Arendtian point of view, the idea of hypermodernity makes more sense than that of post-modernity.