In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice ...

The tragedy of European civilization is a protracted historical event spanning the twentieth century and in many ways is ongoing. During this time some of the greatest modern thinkers were active, producing works that both refl ected what was happening in history and contributed towards shaping it. This work is a critique of their ideas. Harry Redner establishes where and how they went wrong, in some cases with apocalyptic consequences for Europe and the world. The great intellectuals of the age, (...) at once philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, historians and much else besides, include Marx, Weber, Freud, Elias, Spengler, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Arendt, Nietzsche, and Foucault. All of them had a historical impact, even if only in molding academic disciplines and shaping of public opinion, as was the case with the philosophers Wittgenstein and Arendt. This book explores the close links between anti-Semitism and cultural pessimism and the relation between psychology and sociology. Other themes range from the history and theory of the state, to the misconception of language and power. Suitable for students of sociology, philosophy, political theory, history, and cultural studies, this brilliant exploration of our civilization and its tragedies will also be of interest to intellectual general readers. (shrink)

Current scholarship has focused on analyzing how Arendt's storytelling corresponds to her political arguments. In following up this discussion, I offer a closer examination of the unusual myth Arendt uses to explain the condition of the modern age, a myth she refers to as the ?political nature of history.? I employ literary terms along with the standard vocabulary of political theory in shaping this reading of Arendt. Following Robert C. Pirro, I also consider Arendt's story as a tragedy, but in (...) the broadest sense, that of a collision of two goods, freedom and security. By describing Arendt's thought in this manner, I hope to reveal another way in which Arendt represents the call to action that she believes so crucial to humanity, as a summons to we flawed antiheroes through the device of a heroic myth. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone explorar la apropiación que realiza Hannah Arendt de algunas categorías de la teoría aristotélica de la tragedia en el marco de su reflexión en torno a la historia. A partir del análisis del sentido que adquieren en sus escritos, centralmente de los años cincuenta, términos como héroe, grandeza, mimesis y catarsis, sostendremos que la autora encuentra en la narrativa trágica un modo de afrontar el desafío que pesa sobre la comprensión histórica en el contexto pos-totalitario: (...) re-articular pensamiento político y perspectiva histórica. Para finalizar, realizaremos algunas sugerencias para situar esta lectura en diálogo con el modo en que dos de sus maestros, Heidegger y Jaspers, han comprendido filosóficamente lo trágico. Atendiendo a la distancia parcial pero decisiva que Arendt toma respecto a ambos, se vuelve más clara la singularidad de su propuesta. (shrink)

This article addresses Eric L. Santner’s claim that “there is more political theology in everyday life than we might have ever thought” by analyzing the “theologico-political problem” in the work of three prominent twentieth-century political thinkers—Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt. Schmitt, Strauss, and Arendt share a preoccupation with the crisis of modern political liberalism and confront the theologico-political problem in a similar spirit: although their responses differ dramatically, their individual accounts dwell on the absence of incontestable principles in (...) modern society that can justify life-in-common and the persistence of the political order. Their writings thus engage with the question of the place of “the absolute” in the political realm. In particular, Arendt’s indirect approach to the theologico-political problem is crucial to understanding the radicality of a political world in which traditional certainties can no longer be re-established. The theoretical trajectory I present suggests that the dispersion of political theology in everyday life has a specific corollary: modern politics operates within the tragic and paradoxical nature of its unstable and common origins that cannot be incorporated in exceptionalist versions of the body politic. (shrink)

A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what (...) Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This three-volume set tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by both the best-known and lesser-known aestheticians of modern times, focusing on Britain, France and Germany in the eighteenth century; Germany and Britain in the nineteenth; and Germany, Britain and the United States in the twentieth. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought is an authoritative and comprehensive exploration of the themes, thinkers and movements that shaped our intellectual world in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century. Representing both individual figures and the contexts within which they developed their ideas, each essay is written in a clear accessible style by leading scholars in the field and offers both originality and interpretive insight. This second volume surveys twentieth-century European intellectual history, conceived as a crisis in modernity. Comprised (...) of twenty-one chapters, it focuses on figures such as Freud, Heidegger, Adorno and Arendt, surveys major schools of thought including Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Conservatism, and discusses critical movements such as Postcolonialism,, Structuralism, and Post-structuralism. Renouncing a single 'master narrative' of European thought across the period, Peter E. Gordon and Warren Breckman establish a formidable new multi-faceted vision of European intellectual history for the global modern age. (shrink)

A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what (...) Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This three-volume set tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by both the best-known and lesser-known aestheticians of modern times, focusing on Britain, France and Germany in the eighteenth century; Germany and Britain in the nineteenth; and Germany, Britain and the United States in the twentieth. (shrink)

A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what (...) Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This book tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by aestheticians of modern times. This first volume recounts how philosophers in Britain, France, and Germany developed these new approaches and searched for ways to combine them with the cognitivism of traditional aesthetics. (shrink)

A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what (...) Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This set tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by aestheticians of modern times. This second volume tells how over the course of the century philosophers in Germany, Britain, and eventually the United States struggled to return to a broader approach to the value of aesthetic experience by finding room for the emotional and playful aspects of art. (shrink)

A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what (...) Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This set tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by aestheticians of modern times. This third volume shows how philosophers of art in Germany, Britain, and the United States continued the debate over cognitivist versus alternative approaches to aesthetic experience that was at the heart of the discipline in the previous two centuries, while responding to the intellectual challenges of their own times as well. (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)

Arendt's penetrating observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute a major contribution to political philosophy. In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction.

Hegel, the western and classical modernity. The myth and the frontier ; The hero in the epochs of mythical and the bourgeois ; The end of the individual ; The end of the subject -- Romanticism, crime and agonal modernity. The return of tragedy in modernity ; Heroes of coolness and the ironist -- Nietzsche, science fiction and hybrid modernity. Heroic individualismus and metaphysics ; Superhumans, supermen, cyborgs ; Heroes of the future.

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)

For the inaugural issue of the Journal of Continental Philosophy the editors have republished this decisive text in the arc of Hannah Arendt’s thought. In this text she orients us towards the totalitarian impulses inherent to modernity as such. Her text is presented in its various iterations, reprinted with permission from The Modern Challenge to Tradition: Fragmente eines Buches (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018), volume VI of the Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Hannah Arendt.

Introduction : heroes like us -- Hegel, the western and classical modernity -- The myth and the frontier -- The hero in the epochs of mythical and the bourgeois -- The end of the individual -- The end of the subject -- Romanticism, crime and agonal modernity -- The return of tragedy in modernity -- Heroes of coolness and the ironist -- Nietzsche, science fiction and hybrid modernity -- Heroic individualismus and metaphysics -- Superhumans, supermen, cyborgs (...) -- Heroes of the future. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt was born in Germany in 1906 and lived in America from 1941 until her death in 1975. Thus her life spanned the tumultuous years of the twentieth century, as did her thought. She did not consider herself a philosopher, though she studied and maintained close relationships with two great philosophers—Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger—throughout their lives. She was a thinker, in search not of metaphysical truth but of the meaning of appearances and events. She was a questioner rather (...) than an answerer, and she wrote what she thought, principally to encourage others to think for themselves. Fearless of the consequences of thinking, Arendt found courage woven in each and every strand of human freedom. In 1951 she published The Origins of Totalitarianism, in 1958 The Human Condition, in 1961 Between Past and Future, in 1963 On Revolution and Eichmann in Jerusalem, in 1968 Men in Dark Times, in 1970 On Violence, in 1972 Crises of the Republic, and in 1978, posthumously, The Life of the Mind. Starting at the turn of the twenty-first century, Schocken Books has published a series of collections of Arendt’s unpublished and uncollected writings, of which Thinking Without a Banister is the fifth volume. The title refers to Arendt’s description of her experience of thinking, an activity she indulged without any of the traditional religious, moral, political, or philosophic pillars of support. The book’s contents are varied: the essays, lectures, reviews, interviews, speeches, and editorials, taken together, manifest the relentless activity of her mind as well as her character, acquainting the reader with the person Arendt was, and who has hardly yet been appreciated or understood. (Edited and with an introduction by Jerome Kohn). (shrink)

This edited collection enriches scholarship on Arendt by considering her contributions to and reflections on the history of thought. The chapters bring Arendt into new conversations with her contemporaries, as well as examining the themes of Arendt's writing in light of her engagement with philosophical and literary history.

Resumo: A filosofia política de Hannah Arendt tem como pressuposto básico a tese de que a história da filosofia política ou "tradição de filosofia política", como a denomina, se erigiu durante toda a sua duração contra seu objeto, a vida política, não reconhecendo a autenticidade da vida política grega clássica, que se situava precisamente na origem dessa "tradição". A democracia ateniense será então seu grande paradigma político. Nesse texto, preocupados com as fontes gregas usadas por Hannah Arendt para compor sua (...) visão da cidade grega clássica, chegamos a Homero, a vida heróica e as relações no campo de batalha troiano. Para nossa autora a Atenas clássica nada mais pretendeu que resgatar as relações, autenticamente políticas, do campo de batalha troiano.Palavras-chave: tradição de filosofia política - paradigma político - pólis clássica - herói homérico.: The political philosophy of Hannah Arendt arises out of the assumption that the history of political philosophy, or the "tradition of political philosophy", throughout its lifetime was built against its object, the authentic political life, as created and defined by the ancient Greeks. The Greek polis, and particularly Athens democracy, will be the most important political paradigm for Hannah Arendt. In our paper we want to ask which Greek sources are used by the author to compose her own conception of the classical Greek city. In this search we arrived to Homer, the heroic life and the Trojan battlefield. To Hannah Arendt, the classical Athens intended only to restore and to reproduce the authentically political relationship that existed in the archaic Trojan battlefield. (shrink)

In Arendt’s interrogations of political modernity, the concepts of history and politics have an ambiguous relation. On the one hand, she insisted that the performative character of politics as action was bound to its narrative aspect as remembrance. She was also a fervent proponent of integrating the historical sense into political understanding. On the other hand, Arendt characterized the modern historical sensibility from the point of view of politics as a “ghastly absurdity,” and asserted that the political thought of (...) our times needed to free itself both “from history” and “from thinking in historical terms.” This paper explores the different meanings that Arendt granted to “history” as a (anti)political force and to historical sensibility as the basis for political understanding. It argues thatnot only were Arendt’s rejection of the modern concept of history and its politics of history central for her critique, but that it was one of the key concerns that shaped the articulation of her own theory of action. The paper also examines the problem against the background of the intellectual tradition of Arendt’s youth and in particular its uncompromising antihistoricism. (shrink)

A compelling look at the problem of evil in modern thought, from the Inquisition to global terrorism Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us (...) from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it. Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts—combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade—eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't. Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, this book tells the history of modern philosophy as an attempt to come to terms with evil. It reintroduces philosophy to anyone interested in questions of life and death, good and evil, suffering and sense. Featuring a substantial new afterword by Neiman that raises provocative questions about Hannah Arendt's take on Adolf Eichmann and the rationale behind the Hiroshima bombing, this Princeton Classics edition introduces a new generation of readers to this eloquent and thought-provoking meditation on good and evil, life and death, and suffering and sense. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The academic defense of honor for its positive political and moral effects has surged recently among moral philosophers and political theorists. Challenging the narrative that the feudal legacy of honor has become outdated but acknowledging the reasonable points that opponents of honor have made, contemporary defenders aim to render honor compatible with society and politics today. This defense is reminiscent of that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially four modes of honor developed respectively by Hobbes, Mandeville, Montesquieu, and (...) Rousseau. Like contemporary scholars, these thinkers were conscious of the problems often associated with honor but appreciated its political usefulness. They aimed to preserve this feudal legacy in the early modern context. However, a comparative examination of these modes of honor reveals that, despite their internal coherence, they conflicted with one another owing to their authors’ conflicting understandings of the nature of honor. This conflict contributed to the tragic failure of the early modern defense of honor and testified to the conceptual elusiveness of honor. It is a cautionary tale for contemporary scholars who develop and defend essentialist and ahistorical understandings of honor. (shrink)

The present narrative review addresses issues concerning the defining criteria and conceptual underpinnings of pain catastrophizing. To date, the concept of pain catastrophizing has been extensively used in many clinical and experimental contexts and it is considered as one of the most important psychological correlate of pain chronicity and disability. Although its extensive use, we are still facing important problems related to its defining criteria and conceptual understanding. At present, there is no general theoretical agreement of what catastrophizing really is. (...) The lack of a consensus on its definition and conceptual issues has important consequences on the choice of the pain management approaches, defining and identifying problems, and promoting novel research. Clinical and research work in absence of a common theoretical ground is often trivial. It is very surprising that clinical and experimental work has grown extensively in the past years, without a common ground in the form of a clear definition of pain catastrophizing and overview of its conceptual basis. Improving the efficacy and efficiency of pan catastrophizing related treatments requires an understanding of the theoretical construct. So far, most interventions have only demonstrated modest effects in reducing pain catastrophizing. Therefore, clarifying the construct may be an important precursor for developing more targeted and effective interventions, thereby easing some of the burden related to this aspect of pain. In our review, we have extracted and de-constructed common elements that emerge from different theoretical models with the aim to understand the concept of catastrophizing, which components can be modulated by psychological interventions, and the general role in pain processing. The analysis of the literature has indicated essential key elements to explain pain catastrophizing: emotional regulation, catastrophic worry, rumination, behavioral inhibition and behavioral activation systems, and interoceptive sensitivity. The present paper attempts to integrate these key elements with the aim to re-compose and unify the concept within a modern biopsychosocial interpretation of catastrophizing. (shrink)

DIVUses C.L.R. James’sThe Black Jacobins as a jumping-off point for a reconsideration of colonial and postcolonial concepts of history, politics, and agency./div.

James A. Diefenbeck, Wayward Reflections on the History ofPhilosophyThomas R. Flynn Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason. Volume 1:Toward an Existential Theory of HistoryMark Golden and Peter Toohey Inventing Ancient Culture:Historicism, Periodization and the Ancient WorldZenonas Norkus Istorika: Istorinis IvadasEverett Zimmerman The Boundaries of Fiction: History and theEighteenth‐Century British Novel.

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 experim...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 513-530 [Access article in PDF] Hans Blumenberg and Hannah Arendt on the "Unworldly Worldliness" of the Modern Age Elizabeth Brient Introduction In attempting to describe and respond to the dominant ethos of the modern age one is quickly confronted with a startling and seemingly intractable paradox: the age which has defined itself by the very intensity of its "this worldly" orientation (...) is at the same time haunted by an ever growing sense of world loss, of the Unheimlichkeit of modern reality.On the one hand the modern turn away from the transcendent contemplative and religious ideals and values of antiquity and the Middle Ages is evidenced by a profoundly new, active, and indeed constructive approach to the world. Modern science is predicated on an objective stance which demystifies the cosmos and allows for a technological mastery of nature which has improved human life in innumerable ways. The modern conception of the self is grounded in a new conception of the autonomy and dignity of the individual, and modern political theory begins with the notion that society is an artifact to be constructed in the service of the very individuals who constitute the body politic. We are made uneasy by the nagging suspicion that life in this world which we have remade for ourselves is somehow hollow, an artificial construction without depth or solidity, a merely superficial order which threatens to dissolve into meaninglessness. The technological advances made possible by modern science have also brought the atomic bomb, global warming, and acid rain. Power over nature has led to the power to destroy nature. The modern world has seen an unprecedented rise in individual freedom, and yet the autonomy of the individual has all too often given way to the anomie of the individual. Loss of community advances alongside failed experiments in social engineering, and the specter of totalitarianism haunts the modern dream of social and political emancipation. [End Page 513]Paradoxically, then, modern worldliness is attended by an uneasy sense of world alienation. It has become quite common in attempting to give an account for this perplexing state of affairs to speak of a process of secularization in the transition from the medieval to the modern world, a process in which many of the central ideas and principles of the modern age are taken to be secular variations on medieval theological themes. Thus, for example, faith in the progress of science or of history is taken to be a secularized version of belief in divine Providence, the political equality of all individuals under the law is said to be a secular reiteration of the understanding of the equality of all human beings before God, the transcendental subject is exposed as a secular version of the divine or angelic knower, and the communist state and other modern utopias marking the end of history are said to be secularizations of Christian eschatological expectations of the end of the world and the coming reign of God.This reading of the epochal transition explains the worldly character of modern reality in terms of the "immanentization" or secularization of religious attitudes and expectations. It also serves to explain the uncanny sense of worldlessness characteristic of much of modern life. This is because the new secular forms are now revealed either as distorted and impoverished versions of an originally meaningful world view (as for example in Neo-Scholasticism) or as the unfortunate perpetuation or unfolding of an inherently nihilistic tradition (as say Nietzsche, Heidegger, and many contemporary post modernists would have it). But does the secularization thesis as a tool of historical explanation really do justice either to the complex reality of the epochal transition in concrete historical terms or even, and more to the point, to the fundamental character of the supposedly secularized modern ideas?Hans Blumenberg and Hannah Arendt would both no doubt answer emphatically in the negative. Both insist on the genuine novelty of modernity, on the fundamentally unprecedented character of the modern orientation to and in the... (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study of Nietzsche's earliest (and extraordinary) book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). When he wrote it, Nietzsche was a Greek scholar, a friend and champion of Wagner, and a philosopher in the making. His book has been very influential and widely read, but has always posed great difficulties for readers because of the particular way Nietzsche brings his ancient and modern interests together. The proper appreciation of such a work requires access to ideas that cross (...) the boundaries of conventional specialisms. This is now provided by M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern in their joint study of Nietzsche's book. They examine in detail its content, style and form; its strange genesis and hybrid status; its biographical background and the controversy engendered by its publication; its value as an account of ancient Greek culture and as a theory of tragedy and music; its relation to other theories of tragedy; and its place in the history of German ideas and in Nietzsche's own philosophical career. (shrink)

The caesura of tragedy, more precisely tragedy as the scene of a caesura upon which an interruption occurs in the relation between divine grounds and human will, stands at the center of Susan Taubes's confrontation with tragedy. Moving beyond an explication of generic history, she analyzed the “Nature of Tragedy” (1953) as a phenomenon emerging from a cultural-historical threshold situation, illuminating tragedy's origins in the framework of her approach to ritual, religion, and philosophy. In respect to the history of theory, (...) these reflections are located at a transition point between religious and cultural history. Her argument that tragedy maintains a…. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's well-known examinations of the problem of evil are not contradictory and they are central to her corpus. Evil can be banal in some cases (Adolf Eichmann) and radical (the phenomenon of totalitarianism) in others. But behind all expressions of evil, in Arendt's formulations, is the imperative that it be confronted by thinking subjects and thoroughly historicized. This led her away from a view of evil as radical to one of evil as banal. Arendt's ruminations on evil are illuminated, (...) in part, by concerns that she shared with her fellow New York intellectuals about the withering effects of mass culture upon individual volition and understanding. In confronting the challenges of evil, Arendt functioned as a suggesting profitable ways that historians might look at history from a moral perspective. Indeed, her work may be viewed as anticipating a currently afoot in the historical profession. (shrink)

Since the early modern age, labor has gained centrality in both the social order and the conception of man. This study undertakes an attempt to evaluate this ascent by comparing the concept of labor in Hegel’s thought, as presented mainly in the Phenomenology of Spirit, with the conception of labor in the thought of Hannah Arendt. While Hegel linked labor closely to spirituality, Arendt argued that in the process of labor assimilating all human activities, man in fact forfeits spirituality. The (...) peculiar destructiveness of labor seemed to be confirmed by twentieth-century totalitarian regimes elevating labor to a unique source of values. In addition to comparing Hegel and Arendt’s conceptions, the aim of this study is to ask whether Hegel’s concept of labor is susceptible to the dangers inherent in the ideological conceptions of totalitarian regimes. (shrink)

The point of departure for this article is a comparative study of Adorno and Arendt on the question of evil and modernity. To be precise, I observe how Adorno and Arendt present us with very different ways of understanding radical evil as an expression of the modern project of acceleration. This divergence presents us with a problematic which does not fit easily into the framework of the contemporary post-metaphysical engagement with evil. The latter projects a relational, non-substantive concept of (...) evil addressed under the order of collective memory and against the background of a normatively neutralized order of history. Yet I show, by tracing the continuities and discontinuities which exist between Arendt and Adorno’s conceptualizing of radical evil, on the one hand, and the different elements of this contemporary engagement, on the other, how the initial problematic is symptomatic of a continuing investment in history and can only be addressed in terms of such an investment. This investment is the product of a dynamic between history and memory, informing the work of both thinkers, which partially intersects with the Hegelian strategy of theodicy. I thus conclude with a consideration of whether certain aspects of the latter should be rehabilitated. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt is more readily known for her political thought and social commentary on the twentieth century than for her reading of the history of philosophy. This chapter argues that Arendt’s reading reflects a distinctive methodology for the history of philosophy when compared to other prominent twentieth-century historians of philosophy and science. Specifically, the analysis focuses on Arendt’s reading of the meditative tradition in the history of philosophy. In her later work of the 1970s, Arendt highlights the transformations and the (...) abandonment of key ideas in the meditative tradition, particularly in its medieval and modern formulations. Arendt finds that the meaning of the activity of “thinking” in the meditative tradition was lost or distorted in post-Greek philosophical traditions. According to Arendt, the ancient form of meditation expressed the activity of thinking insofar as it was invested in the aporetic model employed by Socrates. Arendt’s unique insight for the history of philosophy is her argument that this loss of the activity of thinking was inextricably linked to the political and moral crisis of her time—totalitarianism. The chapter concludes by drawing out the pedagogical implications of Arendt’s reading of the history of philosophy for undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy. (shrink)

In ‘History of the Lie: Prolegomena’ (2002) Jacques Derrida examines Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the modern lie in politics in her essays ‘Lying in Politics’ (1972) and ‘Truth and Politics’ (1968/ 1993). Arendt contrasts the traditional lie, where lies were told and secrets kept for the greater good or to defeat the enemy, with the modern lie, which comprises deception and self-deception on a massive scale. My paper investigates the seriousness of different kinds of lies in political life in the (...) light of Arendt and Derrida’s reflections on lying and contemporary lies in politics and shows where concern should focus. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 22 This essay explores the influence of Benjamin’s fragmentary historiography on Arendt’s understanding of narrative. I argue that Arendt and Benjamin shared a common understanding of the problems of modernity. For both thinkers contemporary conditions of existence were defined on the one hand, by a similar conception of history, and on the other hand, a break with the tradition of philosophy. I demonstrate that Benjamin’s fragmented history, adopted by Arendt in response to this contemporary politico-philosophical (...) crisis, allowed her to redeem the past as a basis of a future-oriented philosophy by creating a space for arresting the continuum of history and asserting the importance of human agency. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the (...) works of Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

An examination of the intertwined lives and writings of a group of prominent twentieth-century Jewish thinkers who experienced exile and migration Exile, Statelessness, and Migration explores the intertwined lives, careers, and writings of a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals during the mid-twentieth century—in particular, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Hirschman, and Judith Shklar, as well as Hans Kelsen, Emmanuel Levinas, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss. Informed by their Jewish identity and experiences of being outsiders, these thinkers (...) produced one of the most brilliant and effervescent intellectual movements of modernity. Political philosopher Seyla Benhabib’s starting point is that these thinkers faced migration, statelessness, and exile because of their Jewish origins, even if they did not take positions on specifically Jewish issues personally. The sense of belonging and not belonging, of being “eternally half-other,” led them to confront essential questions: What does it mean for the individual to be an equal citizen and to wish to retain one’s ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, or perhaps even to rid oneself of these differences altogether in modernity? Benhabib isolates four themes in their works: dilemmas of belonging and difference; exile, political voice, and loyalty; legality and legitimacy; and pluralism and the problem of judgment. Surveying the work of influential intellectuals, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration recovers the valuable plurality of their Jewish voices and develops their universal insights in the face of the crises of this new century. (shrink)

History ended, according to Hegel according to Kojève, with the establishment and proliferation in Europe of states organized along Napoleonic lines: rational, bureaucratic, homogenous, atheist. This state lives in some tension with the popular slogan that helped give it birth: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. But there is now also totalitarianism – the only new kind of regime, according to Arendt, created since the national state. Man is now in charge of nature, technology, and society; much of political life has become a (...) gavotte elaborating the meaning of the Napoleonic model. This interpretation, however opposed it seems to common sense, has been influential, particularly in France where the course of existentialism is unintelligible without taking it into account. Professor Cooper argues that it is inherently plausible and examines the arguments of Hegel and Kojève to reveal its consistency and explanatory power. And he applies it to more contemporary events – the experience of the atomic bomb, the Gulag system of extermination, and the growth of multinational corporations. The work concludes by pulling together the presuppositions and theories of the totalitarian system, the Hegelian version of the Napoleonic state, and our contemporary technological society. Overall, the reader will find here a complete and challenging presentation of how the modern world understands its collective life. (shrink)

Princess Diana’s death was a tragedy that provoked mourning across the globe; the death of a homeless person, more often than not, is met with apathy. How can we account for this uneven distribution of emotion? Can it simply be explained by the prevailing scientific understanding? Uncovering a rich tradition beginning with Aristotle, _The Secret History of Emotion_ offers a counterpoint to the way we generally understand emotions today. Through a radical rereading of Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Hobbes, Sarah Fielding, and (...) Judith Butler, among others, Daniel M. Gross reveals a persistent intellectual current that considers emotions as psychosocial phenomena. In Gross’s historical analysis of emotion, Aristotle and Hobbes’s rhetoric show that our passions do not stem from some inherent, universal nature of men and women, but rather are conditioned by power relations and social hierarchies. He follows up with consideration of how political passions are distributed to some people but not to others using the Roman Stoics as a guide. Hume and contemporary theorists like Judith Butler, meanwhile, explain to us how psyches are shaped by power. To supplement his argument, Gross also provides a history and critique of the dominant modern view of emotions, expressed in Darwinism and neurobiology, in which they are considered organic, personal feelings independent of social circumstances. The result is a convincing work that rescues the study of the passions from science and returns it to the humanities and the art of rhetoric. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers the first comprehensive reconstruction of Hannah Arendt's contribution to the venerable chapter of modern intellectual history known as ‘the Idea of the university.’ Arendt first jotted down her thoughts on this topic in a 1946 letter to Karl Jaspers, in response to the manuscript of his then forthcoming book Die Idee der Universität. She later revisited the topic in three different moments. We trace these three sequels back to three contemporary political crises to which she bore (...) witness: (i) the problem of Arab-Jewish relations following the founding of Israel, (ii) the suppression of freedom of speech during the McCarthy era, and (iii) the American student protest movement of the 1960s. At the heart of Arendt's idea of the university is a tension that she never managed to resolve: namely, that between the image of the university as a nonconformist community ethically committed to the transformation of the social world, on the one hand, and the image of the university as a secluded sanctuary of contemplative freedom dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of truth, on the other. Whereas the first puts her at odds with Jaspers and is predominant in the early reflections, the second pulls her closer to him and becomes prominent in the later ones. More broadly, the article contends that the history of Arendt's reflections on the university bears on our understanding of the evolution of her political thought. (shrink)