space of appearance

is another word for the public realm, defined by the fact that the public is a context in which everything which can be said to 'appear' in public appears insofar as it can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest appeal.

First, the public realm can be understood in terms of what Arendt calls a 'space of appearances', a context in which 'everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity' (Arendt 1958: 50). It can be understood as a phenomenal realm in which visible conduct provides our common reference point and confirms our common sense of reality... a reality that is not, contra the tradition, reducible to or resolvable in terms of some deeper metaphysical touchstone. It is equally, therefore, a sphere in which how one appears to others constitutes the reality of one's persona qua citizen. In comparison with this sense of reality, for Arendt, 'even the greatest forces of intimate life the passions of the heart, the thoughts of the mind, the delights of the senses lead an uncertain, shadowy kind of existence' (Arendt 1958: 50).' (Buckler 2011: 93)

space of appearance, n.Definitions

space of appearance