Producing and interpreting functional brain data is part of the negotiation we imagine our brain. To take a closer look at the idea of brain imaging as a form of visual knowledge, it is necessary to put the research of today into a historical context. In my article I will point to a specific approach of functional imaging which depends on historical shifts entangled with the visual aspect of producing pictures of the brain. I will bring out the interaction of (...) issues like techniques, models and historical assumptions of the brain and link them with the way the brain images are presented. The aesthetic dimensions (Rancière) in the pictures are also questions of ethics and normativity. (shrink)

The correspondence between Jaspers and Arendt reveals their thoughts and their experiences of post-World War II events.

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology ...

A unique selection of the most significant interviews given by Hannah Arendt, including the last she gave before her death in 1975. Some are published here in English for the first time. Arendt was one of the most important thinkers of her time, famous for her idea of "the banality of evil" which continues to provoke debate. This collection provides new and startling insight into Arendt's thoughts about Watergate and the nature of American politics, about totalitarianism and history, and (...) her own experiences as an emigre. Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is an extraordinary portrait of one of the twentieth century's boldest and most original thinkers. As well as Arendt's last interview with French journalist Roger Errera, the volume features an important interview from the early 60s with German journalist Gunter Gaus, in which the two discuss Arendt's childhood and her escape from Europe, and a conversation with acclaimed historian of the Nazi period, Joachim Fest, as well as other exchanges. These interviews show Arendt in vigorous intellectual form, taking up the issues of her day with energy and wit. She offers comments on the nature of American politics, on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, on Israel; remembers her youth and her early experience of anti-Semitism, and then the swift rise of the Hitler; debates questions of state power and discusses her own processes of thinking and writing. Hers is an intelligence that never rests, that demands always of her interlocutors, and her readers, that they think critically. As she puts it in her last interview, just six months before her death at the age of 69, "there are no dangerous thoughts, for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.". (shrink)

This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book's 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject's life and achievement. Praise for the earlier edition: “Both a personal and an intellectual biography... It represents biography at its best.”—Peter Berger, (...) front page, The New York Times Book Review “A story of surprising drama.... At last, we can see Arendt whole.”—Jim Miller, Newsweek “Indispensable to anyone interested in the life, the thought, or... the example of Hannah Arendt.”—Mark Feeney, Boston Globe “An adventure story that moves from pre-Nazi Germany to fame in the United States, and... a study of the influences that shaped a sharp political awareness.”—Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch Cover drawing by David Schorr. (shrink)

Prima facie, it seems highly plausible to suppose that there is some kind of constitutive relationship between self-control and the self, i.e., that self-control is “control at the service of the self” or even “control by the self.” This belief is not only attractive from a pre-theoretical standpoint, but it also seems to be supported by theoretical reasons. In particular, there is a natural fit between a certain attractive approach to self-control—the so-called “divided mind approach”—and a certain well-established approach to (...) the self—the so-called “deep self” approach. I argue, however, that this initial impression is misleading: on closer inspection, the combination of the divided mind approach to self-control with the deep self approach fails to provide us with a theoretical foundation for the claim that self-control is constitutively linked to the self. I show that, in an interesting twist, combining these two approaches actually supports the opposite claim, leading us to the view that self-control and the self can come apart, and, more specifically, that we sometimes exercise self-control without our self or even against our self. (shrink)

Seit den fruhen achtziger Jahren ist bekannt, dass es zwischen Martin Heidegger und Hannah Arendt - uber die Lehrer-Schuler- und spatere professionelle Verbindung hinaus - eine Liebes- und Freundschaftsbeziehung gegeben hat. Die Dokumente, die das Verhaltnis belegen und in den Nachlassen Arendt und Heidegger im Deutschen Literaturarchiv Marbach lagern, waren bislang nicht zuganglich. In diesem Band werden sie erstmals veroffentlicht. Dieser Publikation mit ihrem grossen Fundus an Materialien kommt erhebliche biographische und werkgeschichtliche Bedeutung zu. Die Ausgabe enthalt zusatzlich zu (...) den aus den Handschriften ubertragenen Texten einen Anmerkungsteil mit kommentierenden Hinweisen, ein erlauterndes Nachwort sowie Register. (shrink)

The detailed story of the passionate and secret love affair between two of the most prominent philosophers of the 20th century--Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Drawing on their previously unknown correspondence, Elzbieta Ettinger describes a relationship that lasted for more than half a century, a relationship that sheds startling light on both individuals.

In a powerful and original contribution to the history of ideas, Hannah Dawson explores the intense preoccupation with language in early-modern philosophy, and presents a groundbreaking analysis of John Locke's critique of words. By examining a broad sweep of pedagogical and philosophical material from antiquity to the late seventeenth century, Dr Dawson explains why language caused anxiety in writers such as Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Nicole, Pufendorf, Boyle, Malebranche and Locke. Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy demonstrates that new (...) developments in philosophy, in conjunction with weaknesses in linguistic theory, resulted in serious concerns about the capacity of words to refer to the world, the stability of meaning, and the duplicitous power of words themselves. Dr Dawson shows that language so fixated all manner of early-modern authors because it was seen as an obstacle to both knowledge and society. She thereby uncovers a novel story about the problem of language in philosophy, and in the process reshapes our understanding of early-modern epistemology, morality and politics. (shrink)

Margaret Canovan argues in this book that much of the published work on Arendt has been flawed by serious misunderstandings, arising from a failure to see her work in its proper context. The author shows how such misunderstanding was possible, and offers a fundamental reinterpretation, drawing on Arendt's unpublished as well as her published work, which sheds new light on most areas of her thought.

The book examines the trajectory of joint philosophical-pedagogical concepts within the framework of the dialogue between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, put in the context of questions concerning the nature of modernity.

Hannah Ginsborg presents fourteen essays which establish Kant's Critique of Judgment as a central contribution to the understanding of human cognition. The papers bring out the significance of Kant's philosophical notion of judgment, and use it to address interpretive issues in Kant's aesthetics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of biology.

Hannah Arendt’s most important contribution to political thought may be her well-known and often-cited notion of the "right to have rights." In this incisive and wide-ranging book, Peg Birmingham explores the theoretical and social foundations of Arendt’s philosophy on human rights. Devoting special consideration to questions and issues surrounding Arendt’s ideas of common humanity, human responsibility, and natality, Birmingham formulates a more complex view of how these basic concepts support Arendt’s theory of human rights. Birmingham considers Arendt’s key philosophical (...) works along with her literary writings, especially those on Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, to reveal the extent of Arendt’s commitment to humanity even as violence, horror, and pessimism overtook Europe during World War II and its aftermath. This current and lively book makes a significant contribution to philosophy, political science, and European intellectual history. (shrink)

This is the story of the clattering of elevated subways and the cacophony of crowded neighborhoods, the heady optimism of industrial progress and the despair of economic recession, and the vibrancy of ethnic cultures and the resilience of ...

Selon l'opinion du jour, Hannah Arendt serait connue et reconnue pour avoir élaboré sur des grandes philosophies politiques du temps présent. Cette appréciation a pour défaut d'occulter l'hostilité déterminée d'Hannah Arendt à ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler "philosophie politique". Hannah Arendt a explicitement avoué qu'elle prenait toujours soin de mentionner l'opposition qui existe entre philosophie et politique. De là, sinon l'ouverture d'un réquisitoire, tout au moins la mise en lumière de ce qui fait obstacle à une fusion (...) harmonieuse entre philosophie et politique. (shrink)

In the present article, I offer a new reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, specifically her argument that ideologies such as racism engender totalitarianism when the lonely and disenfranchised laborers of modern society develop a pathological fixation on formal logic, which I term “logomania.” That is, such logical deductions, from horrifically false premises, are the closest thing to thinking that individuals can engage in after their psyches, relationships, and communities have broken down. And it is only thus (...) that totalitarianism can achieve power, since it offers at least some form of connectedness and meaning, regardless how terrifying and violent. The danger persists, clearly, with the resurgence of the far Right, including in the extraordinary regime of Trump in the United States. From this I conclude that, along with the admirable calls to fight loneliness and rebuild our communities, we should also supplement all formal logical instruction and community education with instruction in creative thinking (including aesthetics), thereby discouraging the monomaniac reliance on formal logic as inadvertent weapon of totalitarianism. (shrink)

Kathryn Gines's book details Hannah Arendt 's racial and conceptual biases against Black people in the US and post-colonial Africa. Gines makes original and significant contributions to feminist philosophy by applying various feminist and anticolonial strategies, including standpoint theory and multidirectionality, to Arendt 's political essays and concepts. Feminist critiques of Arendt in general and racial critiques of "Reflections on Little Rock" in particular are not new; however, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question offers a novel and comprehensive (...) racial critique of Arendt 's major writings. Gines offers a "sustained analysis of Arendt 's treatment of the Black experience in the United States", as well as racial violence within the contexts of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and French and British imperialism and colonialism. In this review I will offer an overview of the book as a whole, before evaluating the extent of Gines's critique as it pertains to Arendt 's misguided judgments and her theory of judgment. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt first argued the continuities between the age of European imperialism and the age of fascism in Europe in 'The Origins of Totalitarianism'. This text uses Arwndt's insights as a starting point for further investigations into the ways in which race, imperialism, slavery and genocide are linked.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is likely to be the first woman to join the canon of the great philosophers. Arendt's work has attracted a huge volume of scholarship. This collection reprints papers from the USA, Germany, France and the UK, where further scholarly work is emerging at an increasing pace. Given that there was vigorous debate of her work in her lifetime, that there have since been several waves of evaluation and re-evaluation, and because a new generation of scholars is (...) now coming to her work, a systematic collection of the critical assessments of her thought is extremely timely. (shrink)

"Bernstein argues that many themes that emerged in the course of Arendt's attempts tounderstand specifically Jewish issues shaped her thinking about politics in general and the life ofthe mind.

While acknowledging Hannah Arendt's keen philosophical and political insights, Kathryn T. Gines claims that there are some problematic assertions and oversights regarding Arendt’s treatment of the "Negro question." Gines focuses on Arendt's reaction to the desegregation of Little Rock schools, to laws making mixed marriages illegal, and to the growing civil rights movement in the south. Reading them alongside Arendt's writings on revolution, the human condition, violence, and responses to the Eichmann war crimes trial, Gines provides a systematic analysis (...) of anti-black racism in Arendt’s work. (shrink)

Now, twenty years later, this collection of fifteenessays brings her work into dialogue with those philosophical views that are at center stage today-- in critical theory, communitarianism, virtue theory, and feminism.

_Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity_ explores the theme of human rights in the work of Hannah Arendt. Parekh argues that Arendt's contribution to this debate has been largely ignored because she does not speak in the same terms as contemporary theoreticians of human rights. Beginning by examining Arendt’s critique of human rights, and the concept of "a right to have rights" with which she contrasts the traditional understanding of human rights, Parekh goes on to analyze some of (...) the tensions and paradoxes within the modern conception of human rights that Arendt brings to light, arguing that Arendt’s perspective must be understood as phenomenological and grounded in a notion of intersubjectivity that she develops in her readings of Kant and Socrates. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt is increasingly recognised as one of the most original social and political thinkers of the twentieth century. In this important book, Richard Bernstein sets out to show that many of the most significant themes in Arendt's thinking have their origins in their confrontation with the Jewish Question. By approaching her mature work from this perspective, we can gain a richer and more subtle grasp of her main ideas. Bernstein discusses some of the key experiences and events in (...) Arendt's life story in order to show how they shaped her thinking. He examines her distinction between the Jewish parvenu and the pariah, and shows how the conscious pariah becomes a basis for understanding the independent thinker. Arendt's deepest insights about politics emerged from her reflections on statelessness, which were based on her own experiences as a stateless person. By confronting the horrors of totalitarianism and the concentration camps, Arendt developed her own distinctive understanding of authentic politics - the politics required to express our humanity and which totalitarianism sought to destroy. Finally, Bernstein takes up Arendt's concern with the phenomenon of the banality of evil. He follows her use of Eichmann in order to explore how the failure to think and to judge is the key for grasping this new phenomenon. _Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question _offers a new interpretation of Arendt and her work - one which situates her in her historical context as an engaged Jewish intellectual. (shrink)

A June 2020 survey found one in four Americans agreeing that “powerful people intentionally planned the coronavirus outbreak.” In fall 2020, seven percent said they believe the elaborate and grotesque mythology of QAnon; another eleven percent were unsure whether they believe it. November and December 2020 found tens of millions of Americans believing in election-theft plots that would require superhuman levels of coordination and secrecy among dozens, perhaps hundreds, of otherwise-unconnected and unidentified miscreants. Conspiracy theories are nothing new, and they (...) raise a question that preoccupied Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism: whatever happened to common sense? Arendt analyzed both conspiracy theories and totalitarian ideologies; in both, she argued, common sense was replaced by “supersense” – her name for all-encompassing Theories of Everything that trace surface political events back to hidden causes. Refuting fake facts doesn’t help, she warned, because “if everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all anymore.” The result, she warns, is a dangerous mix of gullibility and cynicism. My aim in this paper is threefold: to explain Arendt’s arguments, to explore their contemporary relevance, and to examine their consequences through the lens of virtue epistemology. In a section on “the epistemology of bullshit” I use virtue epistemologists’ concepts of epistemic malevolence and epistemic insouciance to examine the production, distribution, and consumption of bullshit, and to define a vice I call culpable credulousness. The final sections discuss the collapse of moral common sense that led multitudes to believe that mass murder can be justified. Arendt sometimes wrote as though morality had mysteriously turned upside-down, replacing “Thou shalt not kill” with “Thou shalt kill.” I argue that this need not be so: the moral principle of justifiable self-defense, applied to fake facts about existential threats, can explain the behavior. Even so, Arendt powerfully analyzes the ways that rules of moral common sense fail in a society where factual common sense has lost its validity. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt is increasingly recognised as one of the most original social and political thinkers of the twentieth century. In this important book, Richard Bernstein sets out to show that many of the most significant themes in Arendt's thinking have their origins in their confrontation with the Jewish Question. By approaching her mature work from this perspective, we can gain a richer and more subtle grasp of her main ideas. Bernstein discusses some of the key experiences and events in (...) Arendt's life story in order to show how they shaped her thinking. He examines her distinction between the Jewish parvenu and the pariah, and shows how the conscious pariah becomes a basis for understanding the independent thinker. Arendt's deepest insights about politics emerged from her reflections on statelessness, which were based on her own experiences as a stateless person. By confronting the horrors of totalitarianism and the concentration camps, Arendt developed her own distinctive understanding of authentic politics - the politics required to express our humanity and which totalitarianism sought to destroy. Finally, Bernstein takes up Arendt's concern with the phenomenon of the banality of evil. He follows her use of Eichmann in order to explore how the failure to think and to judge is the key for grasping this new phenomenon. _Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question _offers a new interpretation of Arendt and her work - one which situates her in her historical context as an engaged Jewish intellectual. (shrink)

Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published in her lifetime was unique, and to this day each continues to provoke fresh thought and interpretations. This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.” Her consternation over how a man who was neither a monster nor a demon could nevertheless be an agent of the most extreme evil evoked derision, outrage, (...) and misunderstanding. The firestorm of controversy prompted Arendt to readdress fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, as she struggled to explicate the meaning of Eichmann in Jerusalem. At the heart of this book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy”; in it Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing, and she examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed. Responsibility and Judgment is an essential work for understanding Arendt’s conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. (shrink)

It is possible to talk about dominant concepts in modern political definitions. Among these concepts; power, violence, hierarchy, security and resource allocation are the prominent ones. For many, politics is how power and authority is distributed and used. When politics is defined in relation to pure power, violence appears to be one of the effective means of politics. Even, with a further extent, violence is seen as an expression of power. As said by C. W. Mills’ “politics is a struggle (...) for power, the ultimate kind of power is violence” or the way Mao Zedong puts it “politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed” are the most typical examples of violence and politics together. It is inevitable for politics, which is defined as art of ruling, obtaining power and maximizing power, to see violence as legitimate. User of this formulation most commonly tend to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate violence. Making this distinction confirms the legitimization of violence as a political action. There are also criticisms of the dominant approach that defines politics through power and violence. These criticisms, by asking whether it is possible to provide a different definition, try to emerge an alternative understanding of politics. Hannah Arendt is one of the prominent thinkers of this current. Through distinguishing the fake and authentic politics, she places action at the center of authentic politics. Action is the ability to initiate and interrupt processes that enables people to realize themselves, make them authentic and live with other humans. In this respect, politics is the act of living together, discussing public issues and taking action for the common world. Acting in the public sphere before their peers causes the person to show uniqueness. In this respect, equality and plurality are the condition of politics. Arendt places not only action, but also “speech” at the center of politics. For Arendt, political life is based on action. The association of politics with the speech clearly excludes violence. According to Arendt, violence is mute and never has the ability to initiate and be creative of the process caused by action, which is the center of politics. The aim of this paper is to rethink politics through Arendt’s views and discussing the possibility of a new definition for politics. (shrink)

A work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, _The Human Condition_ is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then—diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences (...) of our actions—continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, contains an improved and expanded index and a new introduction by noted Arendt scholar Margaret Canovan which incisively analyzes the book's argument and examines its present relevance. A classic in political and social theory, _The Human Condition_ is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely. Hannah Arendt was one of the leading social theorists in the United States. Her _Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy_ and _Love and Saint Augustine_ are also published by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

The article presents information related to Hannah Arendt, who has become one of the most illuminating and certainly one of the most controversial political thinkers of the twentieth century. A tension and a dilemma are at the center of Hannah Arendt's political thought, indicating two formative forces of her spiritual-political identity. Arendt's thinking is decidedly modernist and politically universalist, when she reflects on the political realities of the twentieth century and on the fate of the Jewish people. (...) class='Hi'>Hannah Arendt did not engage in methodological reflections and searched for the elements of totalitarianism. (shrink)

Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, a collection of critical feminist essays on Hannah Arendt, illustrates both the disorientation and the insights that can result when feminist philosophers come to terms with a canonical figure who is a woman.

Hannah Arendt is one of the most prominent thinkers of modern times, whose profound influence extends across philosophy, politics, law, history, international relations, sociology, and literature. Presenting new and powerful ways to think about human freedom and responsibility, Arendt's work has provoked intense debate and controversy. 'Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts' explores the central ideas of Arendt's thought, such as freedom, action, power, judgement, evil, forgiveness and the social. Bringing together an international team of contributors, the essays provide lucid (...) accounts of Arendt's fundamental themes and their ethical and political implications. The specific concepts Arendt deployed to make sense of the human condition, the phenomena of political violence, terror and totalitarianism, and the prospects of sustaining a shared public world are all examined. 'Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts' consolidates the disparate strands of Arendt's thought to provide an accessible and essential guide for anybody who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of this leading intellectual figure. (shrink)

Renewing Our Common World: Essays On Hannah Arendt And Education is the first book to bring together a collection of essays on Hannah Arendt and education. The contributors contend that Arendt offers a unique perspective, one which enhances the liberal and critical traditions' call for transforming education so that it can foster the values of democratic citizenship and social justice. They focuses on a wide array of Arendtian concepts— such as natality, action, freedom, public space, authority and judgment— (...) which are particularly relevant for education in a democratic society. Teachers, educators, and citizens in general who are interested in democratic or civic education would benefit from reading this book. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s (1906-1975) conception of power is entirely distinctive. It is rooted in a political philosophy that celebrates the public realm of freedom that emerges when people act with others as citizens or political equals. For Arendt, power is actualized where people act together to sustain or to change the world they share with one another. Her fundamental claim is this: ‘Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the (...) property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together’. This entry offers some background to Arendt’s account, highlights two important contrasts that she makes between power and violence, and then points to her related notion of authority. (shrink)

Efforts to introduce particular-focused and emotionally engaged storytelling into historiography have sparked intense debate. Stone-Mediatore argues that women and other under-represented groups have a particular interest in defending the epistemic value of storytelling, but that we can do so meaningfully -- not by endorsing all storytelling -- but only by articulating a metahistory that challenges the division between history and story as well as makes explicit the interrelated epistemic and ethical goals of historical inquiry. The author draws on Hannah (...) Arendt and Susan Griffin to begin to articulate such a feminist metahistory. She argues that such a metahistory throws light on the potential value of creative and engaged storytelling, not only for understanding historical events but also for building less violent worlds. (shrink)

"It is impressive to see an edited collection in which such a high intellectual standard is maintained throughout... I learned things from almost every one of these chapters."—Craig Calhoun, author of Critical Social Theory.

Davidson claims that nothing can count as a reason for a belief except another belief. This claim is challenged by McDowell, who holds that perceptual experiences can count as reasons for beliefs. I argue that McDowell fails to take account of a distinction between two different senses in which something can count as a reason for belief. While a non-doxastic experience can count as a reason for belief in one of the two senses, this is not the sense which is (...) presupposed in Davidson's claim. While I focus on McDowell's view, the argument generalizes to other views which take experiences as reasons for belief. (shrink)