Abstract

The essay focuses on Arendt's reflection on human duality and plurality, the thinking ego and the common world. Starting from "Socrates" (1954) and its deliberately stretched interpretation of Plato's allegory of the cave, it takes also into account "Ideology and Terror" (the final chapter of "The Origins of Totalitarianism") and the unfinished writings on "The Life of the Mind" (published posthumously). Finally, the work suggests that human plurality precedes human duality (the «two-in-one») and that therefore duality represents a political matter redirecting our attention to the primacy of the care for the world over the care for the self.