Lo spettacolo del mondo. Heidegger, Agamben e Arendt lettori delle Elegie Duinesi di Rilke

The metaphor of the theatre dwells in the very beginning of the Greek philosophy as a political analogy, like Plato’s and Aristotle’s political works show. The realm of the human affairs was likened to a theatrical stage because of its uncertainty and because the judgment of the many was more likely to grasp it than the lonely contemplation of the philosopher. This paper analyses Heidegger’s, Agamben’s and Arendt’s attempts to ontologize the theatrical metaphor, through the language which Rilke had coined in his Duineser Elegien: the poet names Open the space where the animal lives, while men inhabit the World. Based on the phenomenological methodology, the three authors recognize in the world not just a stage for the appearance of the worldly beings, but also a condition of possibility for the appearance itself. Heidegger and Agamben analyze the relationship between the open and the world, aiming at distinguishing the animal from the human being: in their view, the world and the open are some of the human being’s structures. Arendt recognizes in the world the condition of possibility for the appearance; nevertheless, she means by world the stable and durable product of the human work, which saves men from the ineluctable metabolism with the nature