Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, and the Politics of Love

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 710-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Kim Butorac
Keyword(s):  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
Politics Of Love

Does love have a place in the inherently conflictual realm of democratic politics, particularly in a racialized democracy? This article engages the question of love’s politics by way of Hannah Arendt’s critique of James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind.” Troubled by his “gospel of love,” Arendt wrote to Baldwin, warning him that in politics, love will achieve nothing “except hypocrisy.” Contra Arendt, who argues that love is antipolitical, I show how Baldwin utilizes love to reclaim the lost promise of American democracy. Synthesizing Baldwin’s essays published between 1955–1972, my argument proceeds in two parts: part 1 focuses on the psychological and embodied demands of love, which, for Baldwin, are vital in transforming the consciousness of white and black Americans. Part 2 focuses on Baldwin’s critique of property, linking the project of self-transformation to the need for structural transformation. I show how love enables us to condemn the exploitative logic of capitalism and imagine new modes of relationality. In charting this underexplored point of contact between these thinkers, this article complicates Arendt’s critique of love and sheds new light on the role of love in Baldwin’s political thought.

scholarly journals RECONCILIATION AND VIOLENCE: HANNAH ARENDT ON HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
WASEEM YAQOOB
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Historical Epistemology ◽  
Means And Ends ◽  
The Relationship

This essay reconstructs Hannah Arendt's reading of Marx and Hegel in order to elucidate her critique of comprehensive philosophies of history. During the early 1950s Arendt endeavoured to develop a historical epistemology suitable to her then embryonic understanding of political action. Interpretations of her political thought either treat historical narrative as orthogonal to her central theoretical concerns, or focus on the role of “storytelling” in her writing. Both approaches underplay her serious consideration of the problem of historical understanding in the course of an engagement with European Marxism, French existentialism and French interpretations of Hegel. This essay begins with her writings on totalitarianism and her ambiguous relation with Marxism during the 1940s, and then examines her critique of French existentialism before finally turning to her “Totalitarian Elements of Marxism” project in the early 1950s. Reconstructing Arendt's treatment of philosophies of history helps elucidate the themes of violence and the relationship between means and ends in her political thought, and places a concept of history at the centre of her thought.

scholarly journals The Value of the Surface

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-283
Author(s):  
Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Sense Of Reality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Human Sense ◽  
Adolf Portmann ◽  
Common World

Abstract Through an unorthodox reading of Hannah Arendt, this article argues that her political thought contains unacknowledged resources for conceptualizing embodiment in politics, and in relation to the economy, physical needs, and appearance. In contrast to the way she is typically read, this essay develops an affirmative account of embodiment in Arendt's work. Arendt not only recognizes the role of the appearing body in action but also underscores the importance of labor and necessity for a human sense of reality. Throughout her oeuvre, she presents a historical analysis of the rise of a functionalist, processual understanding of life under capitalist modernity. She also develops an alternative, nonfunctionalist framing of living bodies, highlighting a gratitude for “given” aspects of existence and the value of the bodily surface as a sentient interface between embodied needs and the common world. The article tracks the development of these reflections in Arendt's engagements with Karl Marx, Simone Weil, and Adolf Portmann.

Feminist Interpretations of Action and the Public in Hannah Arendt’s Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Noémi Bíró
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Feminism ◽  
Definition Of

"Feminist Interpretations of Action and the Public in Hannah Arendt’s Theory. Arendt’s typology of human activity and her arguments on the precondition of politics allow for a variety in interpretations for contemporary political thought. The feminist reception of Arendt’s work ranges from critical to conciliatory readings that attempt to find the points in which Arendt’s theory might inspire a feminist political project. In this paper I explore the ways in which feminist thought has responded to Arendt’s definition of action, freedom and politics, and whether her theoretical framework can be useful in a feminist rethinking of politics, power and the public realm. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, political action, the Public, the Social, feminism "

Comedy and the Athenian Ideal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Konstan
Keyword(s):  
American Democracy ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
The World ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
New Comedy ◽  
A Performance

New Comedy was a Panhellenic phenomenon. It may be that a performance in Athens was still the acme of a comic playwright’s career, but Athens was no longer the exclusive venue of the genre. Yet Athens, or an idealized version of Athens, remained the setting or backdrop for New Comedy, whatever its provenance or intended audience. New Comedy was thus an important vehicle for the dissemination of the Athenian polis model throughout the Hellenistic world, and it was a factor in what has been termed ‘the great convergence’. The role of New Comedy in projecting an idealized image of the city-state may be compared to that of Hollywood movies in conveying a similarly romanticized, but not altogether false, conception of American democracy to populations around the world.

scholarly journals François Fénelon: Modern philosopher or conservative theologian?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110020
Author(s):  
Alexandra Oprea
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
Political Philosopher

Ryan Patrick Hanley makes two original claims about François Fénelon: (1) that he is best regarded as a political philosopher, and (2) that his political philosophy is best understood as “moderate and modern.” In what follows, I raise two concerns about Hanley’s revisionist turn. First, I argue that the role of philosophy in Fénelon’s account is rather as a handmaiden of theology than as an autonomous area of inquiry—with implications for both the theory and practice of politics. Second, I use Fénelon’s writings on the education of women as an illustration of the more radical and reactionary aspects of his thought. Despite these limits, the book makes a compelling case for recovering Fénelon and opens up new conversations about education, religion, political economy, and international relations in early modern political thought.

History, Politics, Law

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Many

Historians of political thought and international lawyers have both expanded their interest in the formation of the present global order. History, Politics, Law is the first express encounter between the two disciplines, juxtaposing their perspectives on questions of method and substance. The essays throw light on their approaches to the role of politics and the political in the history of the world beyond the single polity. They discuss the contrast between practice and theory as well as the role of conceptual and contextual analyses in both fields. Specific themes raised for both disciplines include statehood, empires and the role of international institutions, as well as the roles of economics, innovation and gender. The result is a vibrant cross-section of contrasts and parallels between the methods and practices of the two disciplines, demonstrating the many ways in which both can learn from each other.

HOPE AND MEMORY IN THE THOUGHT OF JUDITH SHKLAR

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATRINA FORRESTER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Judith Shklar ◽  
Exclusive Focus

Current interpretations of the political theory of Judith Shklar focus to a disabling extent on her short, late article “The Liberalism of Fear” (1989); commentators take this late essay as representative of her work as a whole and thus characterize her as an anti-totalitarian, Cold War liberal. Other interpretations situate her political thought alongside followers of John Rawls and liberal political philosophy. Challenging the centrality of fear in Shklar's thought, this essay examines her writings on utopian and normative thought, the role of history in political thinking and her notions of ordinary cruelty and injustice. In particular, it shifts emphasis away from an exclusive focus on her late writings in order to consider works published throughout her long career at Harvard University, from 1950 until her death in 1992. By surveying the range of Shklar's critical standpoints and concerns, it suggests that postwar American liberalism was not as monolithic as many interpreters have assumed. Through an examination of her attitudes towards her forebears and contemporaries, it shows why the dominant interpretations of Shklar—as anti-totalitarian émigré thinker, or normative liberal theorist—are flawed. In fact, Shklar moved restlessly between these two categories, and drew from each tradition. By thinking about both hope and memory, she bridged the gap between two distinct strands of postwar American liberalism.

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