Anonymous glory

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patchen Markell
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
William Faulkner ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
Anonymous Processes ◽  
The Human Condition

Hannah Arendt’s political theory is often understood to rest on a celebration of action, the memorable words and deeds of named individuals, over against the anonymous processes constitutive of ‘labor’ and ‘society’. Yet at key moments in The Human Condition and The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt seems to signal a different relationship between political action and anonymity; and she does so in part via citations of the novels of William Faulkner. Using the apparently contradictory notion of ‘anonymous glory’ as a heuristic, this essay reconsiders Arendt’s political thought through readings of the novels she cites, A Fable and Intruder in the Dust. The essay argues that, for Arendt, a conception of action adequate to the scale of modern social power must somehow be both indelibly tied to individual deeds and immersed in a processual field that is indifferent to the needs for meaning or purpose or satisfaction that individuals bring to what they do; and that Arendt’s engagement with this problem both complicates the relation of action to its supposed opposites, and makes it more difficult to conceive of action’s recovery as a reliable source of theoretical or political redemption.

scholarly journals Acting together: The art of collective improvisation in theatre and politics

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-40
Author(s):  
Sonja Vilc
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Collective Improvisation

The paper analyzes the concept of collective improvisation and draws out its potentials for social and political theory. Translating the ideas of collective improvisation from their original context in the theatre into the field of political thought, I argue that they offer a new understanding of political action by reevaluating the concepts of dissensus (Ranci?re) and community (Nancy), as well as the ways in which politics as a system needs to produce collectively binding decisions (Luhmann). I conclude that the ideas inherent in the practice of collective improvisation, as it has been developed within the tradition of modern theatre improvisation, subvert our intuitive ways of thinking about politics and thereby offer an alternative model of being and acting together.

scholarly journals Labor as Action: the Human Condition in the Anthropocene

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-260
Author(s):  
Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Ecological Safety ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Capacity To Act ◽  
Gravitational Pull ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Human Condition

Abstract The Anthropocene has become an umbrella term for the disastrous transgression of ecological safety boundaries by human societies. The impact of this new reality is yet to be fully registered by political theorists. In an attempt to recalibrate the categories of political thought, this article brings Hannah Arendt’s framework of The Human Condition (labor, work, action) into the gravitational pull of the Anthropocene and current knowledge about the Earth System. It elaborates the historical emergence of our capacity to “act in the mode of laboring” during fossil-fueled capitalist modernity, a form of agency relating to our collectively organized laboring processes reminiscent of the capacity of modern sciences to “act into nature” discussed by Arendt. I argue that once read from an energy/ecology-centric perspective, The Human Condition can help us make sense of the Anthropocene predicament, and rethink the modes of collectively organizing the activities of labor, work, and action.

American Political Thought and the Study of Politics

1957 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Matthew Arnold ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Theory Lead

The title of this essay poses not one vexing issue but two, and each of them sharply challenges the student of American political thought. The first might be called the common problem of political theory—the question of its relevance to the institutional facts of life. How, it is asked, can the analysis of political ideas help to illuminate our understanding of political action? Can theory lead us to a surer knowledge of why governments and electorates behave as they do? Can it help us to diagnose and prescribe? Or is the study of theory, on the contrary, justified simply on the ground that the words of Plato and Hobbes and Locke are part of what Matthew Arnold called culture: “the best that has been thought or known in the world”? This is, I take it, a problem universal among students of political thought, whether they choose America, Europe, or China as their realm; and it lends itself to no easy answers.

Hannah Arendt on Eichmann: The Public, the Private and Evil

1984 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiraz Dossa
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Human Condition

Since its publication,Eichmann in Jerusalemhas provoked a storm of controversy. With a few exceptions, critics reacted to the substance of Arendt's thesis with considerable bitterness and hostility. This article argues that her detractors badly misunderstood Arendt because they were insufficiently conversant with, or unaware of, her political theory. Fundamental to this theory, articulated at length in herThe Human Condition, is the crucial distinction between the public and the private. None of her critics, including those who sympathized with Arendt, have understood that her critical analysis of Eichmann's conduct and of the response of the Jewish leadership to the tragic fate that befell their people makes sense on the peculiar terrain of her political theory and particularly in terms of the public-private distinction which lies at the core of this theory.

scholarly journals Quién es quién en el espacio público: Política e identidad en H. Arendt

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
María José López Merino
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Font Size ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Human Condition

<p align="JUSTIFY"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">En lo que sigue presentamos el concepto de identidad del </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>quién</em></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">, que Arendt expone en su obra </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>The Human Condition</em></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">, ligado a la noción de acción política. Presentamos este concepto ligado a tres anomalías que registra la lectura de Arendt: la primera vinculada con la misma noción de política que explora la autora, la segunda vinculada a su posición como pensadora anti-metafísica, y la tercera relacionada ya no con sus ideas sino con su praxis como pensadora: las actividades que la sitúan en espacio público como un quién que tiene algo que decir. Específicamente, en dos momentos peculiares en su escritura: </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>Los orígenes del Totalitarismo</em></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> y </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>Rahel Varnhagen. La vida de una judía</em></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">.</span></span></p><p align="JUSTIFY"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Palabras claves: identidad, quién, acción, narración, espacio público</span></span></p><p align="JUSTIFY"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p align="JUSTIFY"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p align="JUSTIFY"><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></em></p><p align="JUSTIFY"><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">WHO IS WHO IN THE PUBLIC SPACE: POLICITY AND IDENTITY IN H. ARENDT<br /></span></span></em></p><p align="JUSTIFY"><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This article presents the concept of the identity of the ‘who’, exposed by Arendt in her book The Human Condition, linked to the notion of political action. We introduce this concept related to three anomalies that appear in Arendt’s reading: the first associated to the very notion of politics that she explores, the second linked to her position as an antimetaphysical thinker, and the third related not with her ideas but with her praxis as thinker: her activities in the public space like a ‘who’ that has something to say, specifically, in two peculiar moments in her production: Origins of Totalitarianism and Rahel Varnghagen, the Life of a Jewess.<br /></span></span></em></p><p align="JUSTIFY"><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Keyword: identity, who, action, narration, public space</span></span></em></p><p align="JUSTIFY"> </p><p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>

Care and Concern: Arendt with Winnicott

Public Things ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Honig
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Life ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter examines “things” in Hannah Arendt's work in relation to D. W. Winnicott's object relations. Hoping to generate a lexicon for a political theory of public things, it analyzes Arendt's The Human Condition together with Winnicott's work. It notes the convergence of Winnicott and Arendt on the value of care and concern for the world and for others and argues that there is a case to be made for seeing Arendt as a kind of object-relations theorist whose concepts, along with Winnicott's, call attention to the centrality of public things to democratic life. Read with Winnicott, Arendt emerges as a thinker who is committed to the power of thingness to stabilize the flux of nature and the contingency of action.

Hannah Arendt, 1906–1975

2009 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Villa
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

AbstractThis essay provides an overview of the life and theoretical concerns of Hannah Arendt. It traces the way her experience as a German Jew in the 1930s informed her analysis of totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism and her idea of the “banality of evil” in Eichmann in Jerusalem. The essay takes issue with those of Arendt's critics who detect a lack of “love of the Jewish people” in her writing. It also traces the way Arendt's encounter with totalitarian evil led to a deeper questioning of the anti-democratic impulses in the Western tradition of political thought—a questioning that finds its fullest articulation in The Human Condition and On Revolution. Throughout, my concern is to highlight Arendt's contribution to thinking “the political” in a way friendly to the basic phenomenon of human plurality. I also highlight her recovery and extension of the main themes of the civic republican tradition.

scholarly journals Genealogy of Experiential Frames: Methodological Notes on Arendt

Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Frame Analysis ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Process Thinking ◽  
The World ◽  
Unique Approach ◽  
The Human Condition

This article seeks to add a new theoretical voice to the tradition of genealogical inquiry in political theory and beyond by offering a re-reading of the thought of Hannah Arendt. Going beyond the letter of her thought, in this article I propose that placing Arendt in the genealogical tradition of inquiry (particularly its Foucauldian strand) helps to make sense of what she was “up to” when she turned to history in her work, especially in the analysis of totalitarianism and the account of modernity presented in The Human Condition. I will specifically highlight the historical emergence of “process-thinking” that Arendt traces across her writings. The article seeks to sketch a unique approach to genealogical inquiry that can be taken up by anyone interested in critical analysis of our present age and its politics. Towards the end of the essay, I elaborate this approach methodologically by making a reference to frame analysis. Thus, I articulate a “genealogical frame analysis”, an inquiry into historical emergence of various metaphors and frames that organize our experience of the world. I also highlight the centrality of events for Arendt’s genealogy, as well as its role in a broader set of world-building practices.

scholarly journals The Oxford Handbook of Levinas

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Human Condition

Emmanuel Levinas (1906—1995) emerged as an influential philosophical voice in the final decades of the twentieth century, and his reputation has continued to flourish and increase in our own day. His central themes—the primacy of the ethical and the core of ethics as our responsibility to and for others—speak to readers from a host of disciplines and perspectives. However, his writings and thought are challenging and difficult. The Oxford Handbook of Levinas contains essays that aim to clarify and engage Levinas and his writings in a number of ways. Some focus on central themes of his work, others on the ways in which he read and was influenced by figures from Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant to Blanchot, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida. Other essays focus on how his thinking has been appropriated in moral and political thought, psychology, film criticism, and more, and on the relation between his thinking and religious themes and traditions. Finally, several essays deal primarily with how readers have criticized Levinas and found him wanting. This volume exposes and explores both the depth of Levinas’s philosophical work and the range of applications to which it has been put, with special attention to clarifying how his interests in the human condition, the crisis of civilization, the centrality and character of ethics and morality, and the very meaning of human experience should be of interest to the widest range of readers.

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