Bounded action: Hannah Arendt on the history of science and the limits of freedom

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-451
Author(s):  
Roni Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Professional Community ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Experimental Scientist

The article asks why and how Hannah Arendt framed The Human Condition as a history of modern science. It answers that, in telling the history of instrumental rationality and the work of the experimental scientist, Arendt accomplished three main things. First, by identifying science as a form of ‘work’ she could demonstrate the significance of her threefold division of human activity into labour, work and action, highlighting the dangers of their indistinction. Second, Arendt used the form of organization typical of scientists – a professional community founded on standards of objectivity – to warn against the substitution of the appearance of publicity for true openness. Finally, she identified the transgression of the boundaries of action as the site where a political community might become visible to itself, taking the unsuccessful attempts of post-war ‘public scientists’ to reckon with their past as a cautionary tale. Her account of modern science thus allows her to define freedom through its dependence on human-made boundaries, politicizing the very act of history-writing.

The Theology of Victorian Scientific Naturalists

2019 ◽  
pp. 235-254
Author(s):  
Bernard Lightman
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Tyndall ◽  
The Human Condition

The Victorian scientific naturalists are particularly important for an understanding of the history of naturalism. They were the first group of scientists and intellectuals to adopt secular naturalism to forge an identity aimed at setting themselves apart from colleagues who remained loyal to Christianity. Three of the most important Victorian scientific naturalists, the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, the physicist John Tyndall, and the philosopher Herbert Spencer, drew on several concepts closely associated with the Christian theology of their day to articulate, largely in a secularized form, some of their deepest beliefs about nature and the human condition. These beliefs were integral to their science and their vision of scientific progress. They were elements of a ‘theology’ in line with modern science.

scholarly journals The Creaturely Life of Carol Reed's Cities: Eric Santner and Walter Benjamin

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-129
Author(s):  
John Charles Hill
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Conventional Film ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

In the years following the end of the Second World War Carol Reed directed three films, Odd Man Out (1947), The Third Man (1949), and The Man Between (1953), that all dealt with individuals somehow cast alone into post-war urban environments that shared certain characteristics of division and violence. This article argues that they can be usefully analysed through the lens of Walter Benjamin's notion of the creaturely, especially through Eric Santner's explication of the concept. It considers the films from three aspects of Santner's creaturely life: natural history, the state of exception, and undeadness. These qualities of the creaturely as an analysis of the human condition help to encompass some of the strangeness of Reed's apparently conventional film narratives. The films' characters can be seen as overtly modelling a kind of Benjaminian natural history, the history of the brutal twentieth century, in which the vulnerable, mortal, dying human beings at the centre of these tales stumble around in real cities manifesting in real broken stones and brick, the allegorical ruins of a past order. They are victims of an arbitrary law experiencing life in a permanent now as the endless liminality of death, and are therefore, as examples of our creaturely state, terminally undead.

scholarly journals INVESTIGATION OF SIEGFRIED LENZ'S NOVEL ENTITLED " THE TURNCOAT" IN THE FRAMEWORK OF HANNAH ARENDT'S PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-272
Author(s):  
Ayhan Yavuz ÖZDEMİR
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Style Of Writing

II. World War has an important place in the history of Germany, as it affected the society deeply in sociological, economic and psychological aspects and the damage left is not easily lost. Therefore, World War II and post-war period has been the subject of many literary works. Depicting of the social panorama reflected in the novel "The Pure Changer" by Siegfried Lenz, one of the German literary writers constitutes the aim of the study. Considering the fact that other social sciences can be used while interpreting literary works, the novel has been handled within the framework of Hannah Arendt's philosophical views, taking into consideration the interdisciplinary perspective. In addition, while analyzing the novel, the text-based approach style was taken into account. In this study, the style of writing of Siegfried Lenz was mentioned and the novel was analyzed considering the philosophical views of Hannah Arendt. In this study, the search for the truth with conscientious, critical and moral principles by elusion of the reality of evil becoming ordinary, of individuals who have ideas and can assume responsibility among German soldiers during the war period and the post-war period are discussed in the novel. Key words: Post-war German Literature, Siegfried Lenz, Hannah Arendt

Charles de Gaulle and European Community

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
David Ramiro Troitino ◽  
Tanel Kerikmae ◽  
Olga Shumilo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
European Community ◽  
World War ◽  
Charles De Gaulle ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War ◽  
De Gaulle

This article highlights the role of Charles de Gaulle in the history of united post-war Europe, his approaches to the internal and foreign French policies, also vetoing the membership of the United Kingdom in the European Community. The authors describe the emergence of De Gaulle as a politician, his uneasy relationship with Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II, also the roots of developing a “nationalistic” approach to regional policy after the end of the war. The article also considers the emergence of the Common Agricultural Policy (hereinafter - CAP), one of Charles de Gaulle’s biggest achievements in foreign policy, and the reasons for the Fouchet Plan defeat.

State-run celebration of Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia (based on audiovisual sources)

2019 ◽  
pp. 251-268
Author(s):  
Timur Gimadeev
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military

The article deals with the history of celebrating the Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia organised by the state. Various aspects of the history of the holiday have been considered with the extensive use of audiovisual documents (materials from Czechoslovak newsreels and TV archives), which allowed for a detailed analysis of the propaganda representation of the holiday. As a result, it has been possible to identify the main stages of the historical evolution of the celebrations of Liberation Day, to discover the close interdependence between these stages and the country’s political development. The establishment of the holiday itself — its concept and the military parade as the main ritual — took place in the first post-war years, simultaneously with the consolidation of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Later, until the end of the 1960s, the celebrations gradually evolved along the political regime, acquiring new ritual forms (ceremonial meetings, and “guards of memory”). In 1968, at the same time as there was an attempt to rethink the entire socialist regime and the historical experience connected with it, an attempt was made to reconstruct Liberation Day. However, political “normalisation” led to the normalisation of the celebration itself, which played an important role in legitimising the Soviet presence in the country. At this stage, the role of ceremonial meetings and “guards of memory” increased, while inventions released in time for 9 May appeared and “May TV” was specially produced. The fall of the Communist regime in 1989 led to the fall of the concept of Liberation Day on 9 May, resulting in changes of the title, date and paradigm of the holiday, which became Victory Day and has been since celebrated on 8 May.

Philosophcal review of h. white̕s tropological theory in the context of the new philosophy of history

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (152) ◽  
pp. 92-99
Author(s):  
S. M. Geiko ◽  
◽  
O. D. Lauta
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Text Organization ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Actual Material ◽  
The Common ◽  
Historical Nature ◽  
Selection Of

The article provides a philosophical analysis of the tropological theory of the history of H. White. The researcher claims that history is a specific kind of literature, and the historical works is the connection of a certain set of research and narrative operations. The first type of operation answers the question of why the event happened this way and not the other. The second operation is the social description, the narrative of events, the intellectual act of organizing the actual material. According to H. White, this is where the set of ideas and preferences of the researcher begin to work, mainly of a literary and historical nature. Explanations are the main mechanism that becomes the common thread of the narrative. The are implemented through using plot (romantic, satire, comic and tragic) and trope systems – the main stylistic forms of text organization (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony). The latter decisively influenced for result of the work historians. Historiographical style follows the tropological model, the selection of which is determined by the historian’s individual language practice. When the choice is made, the imagination is ready to create a narrative. Therefore, the historical understanding, according to H. White, can only be tropological. H. White proposes a new methodology for historical research. During the discourse, adequate speech is created to analyze historical phenomena, which the philosopher defines as prefigurative tropological movement. This is how history is revealed through the art of anthropology. Thus, H. White’s tropical history theory offers modern science f meaningful and metatheoretically significant. The structure of concepts on which the classification of historiographical styles can be based and the predictive function of philosophy regarding historical knowledge can be refined.

"Iets ten voordelen van onzen jeugd". John Caremans, Edgar Lehembre, Remi Van Mieghem en de Vlaamse en Duitse intriges omtrent de Vlaams-nationalistische jeugdbeweging in 1942

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-193
Author(s):  
Frank Seberechts
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
National Union ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
Youth Movements ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Youth Leader ◽  
Second World

Uit de papieren van jeugdleider John Caremans, die aan de zorgen van het ADVN werden toevertrouwd, krijgen we een duidelijker beeld van de geschiedenis van de Vlaams-nationalistische jeugdbewegingen voor en tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Caremans voert in 1942 in opdracht van zijn oversten ‘verkenningsopdrachten’ uit bij vertegenwoordigers van de nationaal-socialistische jeugdbeweging in Duitsland. Uit het verslag dat Caremans over zijn reizen opstelt en uit de naoorlogse ondervragingen van Caremans en van zijn chef, jeugdleider Edgar Lehembre, blijkt dat deze reizen naar Berlijn slechts een episode vormen in de strijd die gedurende de hele bezetting woedt tussen de verschillende jeugdbewegingen in Vlaanderen en tussen, de verschillende partijen en ideologische strekkingen in de collaboratie. Alle ingrediënten zijn aanwezig: de scepsis van een deel van de Nationaal-Socialistische Jeugd Vlaanderen (NSJV) tegenover de brute nationaal-socialistische machtshonger, het onbegrip en de machtspolitiek van Duitse instanties als het Deutsche Arbeiterfront (DAF) en de Hitlerjugend (HJ) tegenover de buitenlanders – zelfs wanneer die zich in de collaboratie inschakelen, de inmenging van Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (VNV) en van de Vlaamsch-Duitsche Arbeidsgemeenschap (DeVlag)/SS. Het wordt duidelijk dat Lehembre en het VNV in deze strijd het onderspit zullen delven.________“Something on behalf of our young people”. John Caremans, Edgar Lehembre, Remi Van Mieghem and the Flemish and German machinations concerning the Flemish nationalist youth movement in 1942.The documents of youth leader John Caremans, which had been entrusted to the care of the ADVN, give a clearer picture of the history of the Flemish Nationalist youth movements before and during the Second World War. In 1942, Caremans was instructed by his superiors to carry out ‘exploratory missions’ among representatives of the National Socialist youth movement in Germany.The report written by Caremans about his travels and post-war interrogations of Caremans and his chief, youth leader, Edgar Lehembre, demonstrate that these trips to Berlin constituted only one episode in the struggle that raged throughout the occupation between the various youth movements in Flanders and between the various parties and ideological trends in the collaboration. All ingredients are present: the scepticism of a part of the National Socialist Youth of Flanders (NSJV) towards the brute National Socialist craving for power, the incomprehension and the power politics of German agencies, like the Deutsche Arbeiterfront (DAF) and the Hitlerjugend (HJ) towards foreigners – even when they engage in collaboration, the interference of the Flemish National Union (VNV) and the Flemish German Labour Community (De Vlag)/SS. It becomes clear that Lehembre and the VNV would come off worst in this combat.

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