Aoife McInerney

Can anyone disclose the essence of human nature? Is it possible to know the substance of humanity itself in the same way one can know, say, the composition of the human body? Within the phenomenological movement we can find, then,a unique approach to the questions posed above. This paper discusses the answers of two particular authors: Edmund Husserl and Hannah Arendt. More specifically, this paper will use the idea of plurality as a guiding thread through each thinker’s work,exploring the nuances and development of the term. While the word ‘plurality’ is often used in various discourses, when understood phenomenologically, plurality harbors an ontological significance that can be properly grasped from within a phenomenological perspective.