This article analyses the readings of Homer and Aristotle by Hannah Arendt. Starting from her reinterpretation of the concepts of courage, phronesis and politics, we point out in those readings elements of her definition of the ethos of the political man as well as the rise of the public space. The article further discusses two paradoxes in Arendt's thought: on the one hand, the parallel between the warrior courage of the Homeric hero and the virtue of the Aristotelic phronesis and, on the other hand, political action as a tool to reveal the agent in the public space and as a collective activity aiming at the creation of institutions. As a conclusion, the article points out that Arendt's readings of Homer and Aristotle, paradoxical as they can be, form the theoretical basis for the radical separation between politics and violence that she sustains.
phronesis; courage; polis; institutions; Hannah Arendt