Hannah Arendt

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheldon S. Wolin
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter explores the origins of the antidemocratic strain in Hannah Arendt's thought, tracing it from its beginnings in her classic study of totalitarianism to its apogee in her next major work, The Human Condition. It then shows that in her later writings a change is evident. It appeared first in the last chapter of On Revolution (1963) and more strikingly in the collection of essays, Crises of the Republic (1969). While on the way to what can fairly be described as a leftward position, she modified some of her most characteristic categories. Within limits, and in her own way, she was in the course of reflecting upon the political events of the 1960s, radicalized.

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.

The Politics of Worldlessness

2020 ◽  
pp. 80-127
Author(s):  
Roland Végső
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Political World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

The chapter examines Hannah Arendt’s critique of martin Heidegger and concentrates on the way Arendt tries to subvert the Heideggerian paradigm of worldlessness. While for Heidegger, the ontological paradigm of worldlessness was the lifeless stone, in Arendt’s book biological life itself emerges as the worldless condition of the political world of publicity. The theoretical challenge bequeathed to us by Arendt is to draw the consequences of the simple fact that life is worldless. The worldlessness of life, therefore, becomes a genuine condition of impossibility for politics: it makes politics possible, but at the same time it threatens the very existence of politics. The chapter traces the development of this argument in three of Arendt’s major works: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and The Life of the Mind.

29. Arendt

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Lacroix
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Political Interpretation ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter examines a number of key concepts in Hannah Arendt's work, with particular emphasis on how they have influenced contemporary thought about the meaning of human rights. It begins with a discussion of Arendt's claim that totalitarianism amounts to a destruction of the political domain and a denial of the human condition itself; this in turn had occurred only because human rights had lost all validity. It then considers Arendt's formula of the ‘right to have rights’ and how it opens the way to a ‘political’ conception of human rights founded on the defence of republican institutions and public-spiritedness. It shows that this ‘political’ interpretation of human rights is itself based on an underlying understanding of the human condition as marked by natality, liberty, plurality and action, The chapter concludes by reflecting on the so-called ‘right to humanity’.

And Worldlessness, Alas, is Always a Kind of Barbarism: Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Educating in Worldless Times

2010 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-532
Author(s):  
Stephanie Mackler
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Best Response ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Thinking Differently ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

Background/Context In 1958, Hannah Arendt wrote “The Crisis in Education,” arguing that schools should not be used for political purposes and should instead introduce children to what she calls “the world.” The world, for Arendt, comprises the artifacts, ideas, values, and interactions that connect people together. In that same year, she published The Human Condition, a damning analysis of the problem of what she calls “world alienation” in the modern era. By this, she means that we experience a radical sense of disconnection and alienation from the physical and social world we share with others. The tension between these two pieces is provocative, because one advocates giving children a world, while the other suggests that there is no longer a world to give. Purpose/Objective This article begins from the aforementioned point of tension to consider what Arendt might have said about education in 2008, particularly in light of the discussion of world alienation in The Human Condition and Arendt's later work on thinking in The Life of the Mind. Although Arendt's analysis of worldlessness is multifaceted, this article focuses on one specific aspect of her argument: the way our very approaches to thinking— including the way we conduct scholarly inquiry—contribute to the loss of the world. Research Design This work is philosophical in nature, focusing on several of Hannah Arendt's published works. Conclusions/Recommendations Drawing on Arendt's work on thinking, the author argues that the best response to worldlessness is a specific type of thinking. The article concludes by suggesting that educational researchers and practitioners consider the ways in which education is currently implicated in the problem of world alienation, as well as the ways that we can start thinking differently in response. “The future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.”1

scholarly journals OFFRED AS THE VICTIM OF TOTALITARIANISM IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE

Prosodi ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
Ribka Transiska Deboranti ◽  
Mamik Tri Wedati
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Way ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

This study uses descriptive qualitative method which focusing on the literary work in the novel and interpretation on the analysis. The main data is taken from the novel The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood. This subject of study focus on the influences of totalitarianism held in the Republic of Gilead and how Offred resists totalitarianism in the novel. In order to analyze the text, this study uses the theory of Totalitarianism by Friedrich and Brzeziinski and Hannah Arendt. The result of this analysis depicts the political system of totalitarianism in Gilead influences their societies, especially Offred and the way to resist against the regime. The features of totalitarianism are used to depict the characteristics of totalitarianism that happen in Gilead society. The totalitarianism ideology brings Offred’s action to resist against it.

scholarly journals Lies and Fabrications. The Cognitive Potential of Pseudos in Plato’s Republic

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-90
Author(s):  
Dorota Zygmuntowicz
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
Structural Element ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Realistic Description ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Human Condition

In this article, I pose the question of what the role of the pseudos theme is in the entire argument of the Republic, which is motivated by a challenge from Thrasymachus, who defined justice as “the advantage of the stronger/ruler.” How can the “beautiful polis” (Kallipolis), based on a “noble falshood” addressed to its rulers in particular, be a good counterargument to the realist Thrasymachus? I show that Plato, wanting to prove that Thrasymachus’s thesis is too narrow and only seemingly realistic description of political reality, explicitly uses the same tool that implicitly lies at the root of the worldview expressed in the rhetorician’s thesis: ideological falsehood. He opposes the ugly ideology (the advantage of the stronger) with a “noble falsehood” (the dogma of love), since falsehood as such is an indispensable structural element of the polis itself, resulting from the weakness of the faculty of reason proper to the human condition. The pseudos theme has a dual function in the Republic: heuristic and structural. First, Plato exposes the implicit ideological falsehood underlying Thrasymachus’s realistic thesis using a falsehood that he [Plato] himself has explicitly proposed. Second, he presents falsehood as a component of the political, which compensates for human ignorance and exploits human susceptibility to normative and cultural implementations.

On Hearing the Daughters’ Call

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-155
Author(s):  
Elva Orozco Mendoza ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Northern Mexico ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Maternal Activism ◽  
The Human Condition

This article offers an interpretation of anti-feminicide maternal activism as political in northern Mexico by analyzing it alongside Hannah Arendt’s concepts of freedom, natality, and the child in The Human Condition. While feminist theorists often debate whether maternalism strengthens or undermines women’s political participation, the author offers an unconventional interpretation of Arendt’s categories to illustrate that the meaning and practice of maternalism radically changes through the public performance of motherhood. While Arendt does not seem the best candidate to navigate this debate, her concepts of freedom and the child provide a productive perspective to rethink the relationship between maternalism and citizenship. In making this claim, this article challenges feminist political theories that depict motherhood as the chief source of women’s subordination. In the case of northern Mexico, anti-feminicide maternal activism illustrates how the political is also a personal endeavor, thereby complementing the famous feminist motto.

Public Things, Shared Space, and the Commons

Public Things ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Honig
Keyword(s):  
Shared Memory ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Public ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Lincoln Memorial ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
The Human Condition

This epilogue compares the public things model with that of two others, the commons (or undercommons) and shared space. It argues that while all three models respond to the democratic need, public things have their own specific and necessary contribution to make. The Lincoln Memorial is the sort of thing Hannah Arendt has in mind as the basis of shared memory and action in The Human Condition. The commons model identifies the losses caused by dispossession, appropriation, and accumulation, and public things may well look like one more enclosure in a very long line of them. This epilogue discusses the contributions that all three models can make to the project of preventing ever-increasing privatization and promoting justice and equality in contemporary democratic societies.

Introduction: almost nothing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Dezeuze
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Art Object ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Human Condition

This introduction introduces the term ‘precariousness’ by contrasting it with the ‘ephemeral’. Precarious practices that explore the ‘almost nothing’ are situated in the context of studies of ‘nothingness’ and empty exhibitions in contemporary art. Such debates focus on the ‘dematerialisation’ of the art object since the 1960s, which will be addressed from a new perspective following Lawrence Alloway’s 1969 definition of ‘an expanding and disappearing’ work of art. Re-readings of the materiality of contemporary art since the 1960s are related to continental debates concerning ‘precarity’ in the 1990s, and traced back to Hannah Arendt’s 1958 remarks on The Human Condition. Two different philosophical books — Vladimir Jankélévitch’s 1957 Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le presque rien, and Simon Critchley’s 1997 Very little, almost nothing — point to some of the questions and methods raised by the study of precarious practices.

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