“[T]he reality of the public realm
relies on the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects in
which the common world presents itself and for which no common measurement or
denominator can ever be devised. For though the common world is the common
meeting ground of all, those who are present have different locations in it,
and the location of one can no more coincide with the location of another than
the location of two objects. Being seen and being heard by others derive their
significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different
position.
…
[the] destruction of the common
world [is] usually preceded by the destruction of the many aspects in which it
presents itself to human plurality. … Men have become entirely private, that
is, they have been deprived of hearing and seeing others, of being seen and
been heard by them. They are all imprisoned in the subjectivity of their own
singular experience, which does not cease to be singular if the same experience
is multiplied in innumerable times. The end of the common world has come when
it is seen only under one aspect and is permitted to present itself in only one
perspective”.
H. Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 58.
