Thinking Without a Banister

Thinking Without a Banister PDF Author: Hannah Arendt
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 1101870303
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
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 Starting at the turn of the twenty-first century, Schocken Books has published a series of collections of Arendt’s unpublished and uncollected writings, of which Thinking Without a Banister is the fifth volume.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)

Thinking Without a Banister

Thinking Without a Banister PDF Author: Hannah Arendt
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 1101870303
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Get Book

Book Description
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)

Hannah Arendt And The Jewish Question

Hannah Arendt And The Jewish Question PDF Author: Richard J. Bernstein
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262522144
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Hannah Arendt (1906-­1975) was one of the most original and interesting political thinkers of the twentieth century. In this new interpretation of her career, philosopher Richard Bernstein situates Arendt historically as an engaged Jewish intellectual and explores the range of her thinking from the perspective of her continuing confrontation with "the Jewish question."Bernstein argues that many themes that emerged in the course of Arendt's attempts to understand specifically Jewish issues shaped her thinking about politics in general and the life of the mind. By exploring pivotal events of her life story ­ her arrest and subsequent emigration from Germany in 1933, her precarious existence in Paris as a stateless Jew working for Zionist organizations, her internment at Gurs and her subsequent escape, and finally her flight from Europe in 1941 ­ he shows how personal experiences and her responses to them oriented her thinking. Arendt's analysis of the Jews' lack of preparation for the vicious political antiSemitism that arose in the last decade of the nineteenth century, Bernstein argues, led her on a quest for the ultimate meaning of politics and political responsibility. Moreover, he points out that Arendt's deepest insights about politics emerged from her reflections on statelessness and totalitarian domination. Bernstein also examines Arendt's attraction to and break with Zionism, and the reasons for her critical stance toward a Jewish sovereign state. He then turns to the issue that, in Arendt's opinion, needed most to be confronted in the aftermath of World War II: the fundamental nature of evil. He traces the nuances of her thinking from "radical evil" to "the banality of evil" and, finally, reexamines Eichmann in Jerusalem, her meditation on evil that caused a storm of protest and led some to question her loyalty to the Jewish people.

The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt

The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt PDF Author: Dana Villa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521645713
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
A distinguished team of contributors examines the primary themes of Arendt's multi-faceted thought.

Hannah Arendt on Educational Thinking and Practice in Dark Times

Hannah Arendt on Educational Thinking and Practice in Dark Times PDF Author: Wayne Veck
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350069124
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In her renowned and provocative essay, The Crisis in Education, Hannah Arendt observed that a 'crisis becomes a disaster only when we respond to it with preformed judgements, that is, with prejudices'. Taken as a whole, Arendt's work provides an enduring provocation to think and to make judgements about education and the issues that impact on it, such as political, economic and cultural disruption and uncertainty. Drawing together the leading thinkers on Arendtian ideas and education, this collection explores the role and promise education can have in preparing the future generation to understand, to think about and to act within the world. Concluding the same essay on the crisis in education, Arendt declared education to be the point at which love for the world meets love for those who are newcomers to it. The authors respond to Arendt's call for responsibility and authority in education, providing a leading edge thinking, analysis and agenda setting for public education systems and the world in dark times.

Violence

Violence PDF Author: Richard J. Bernstein
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745678793
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
We live in a time when we are overwhelmed with talk and images ofviolence. Whether on television, the internet, films or the videoscreen, we can’t escape representations of actual orfictional violence - another murder, another killing spree in ahigh school or movie theatre, another action movie filled withimages of violence. Our age could well be called “The Age ofViolence” because representations of real or imaginedviolence, sometimes fused together, are pervasive. But what do wemean by violence? What can violence achieve? Are there limits toviolence and, if so, what are they? In this new book Richard Bernstein seeks to answer these questionsby examining the work of five figures who have thought deeply aboutviolence - Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, FrantzFanon, and Jan Assmann. He shows that we have much to learn fromtheir work about the meaning of violence in our times. Through thecritical examination of their writings he also brings out thelimits of violence. There are compelling reasons to commitourselves to non-violence, and yet at the same time we have toacknowledge that there are exceptional circumstances in whichviolence can be justified. Bernstein argues that there can be nogeneral criteria for determining when violence is justified. Theonly plausible way of dealing with this issue is to cultivatepublics in which there is free and open discussion and in whichindividuals are committed to listen to one other: when publicdebate withers, there is nothing to prevent the triumph ofmurderous violence.

Reasoning With Who We Are

Reasoning With Who We Are PDF Author: Mark Redhead
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442227087
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
In this ambitious study, Mark Redhead explores versions of public reasoning in the works of six of the most important voices in contemporary political theory; Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Hannah Arendt, Seyla Benhabib, Michel Foucault, and William E. Connolly. He identifies an important but as of yet unappreciated version of public reasoning--, one that provides creative and effective responses to questions at the forefront of liberal democratic political thought: human rights, security, and global governance.

Politics without Vision

Politics without Vision PDF Author: Tracy B. Strong
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226777472
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
“Magisterial…a frequently surprising treatment of major political thinkers.”—Perspectives on Politics From Plato through the nineteenth century, the West could draw on comprehensive political visions to guide government and society. Now, for the first time in more than two thousand years, Tracy B. Strong contends, we have lost our foundational supports. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the state of political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has left us effectively thinking without a banister. Politics without Vision takes up the thought of seven influential thinkers, each of whom attempted to construct a political solution to this problem: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lenin, Schmitt, Heidegger, and Arendt. None of these theorists were liberals; nor, excepting possibly Arendt, were they democrats—and some might even be said to have served as handmaidens to totalitarianism. And all, to a greater or lesser extent, shared the common conviction that the institutions and practices of liberalism are inadequate to the demands and stresses of the present times. In examining their thought, Strong acknowledges the political evil that some of their ideas served to foster but argues that these were not necessarily the only paths their explorations could have taken. By uncovering the turning points in their thought—and the paths not taken—Strong strives to develop a political theory that can avoid, and perhaps help explain, the mistakes of the past while furthering the democratic impulse. Confronting the widespread belief that political thought is on the decline, Strong puts forth a brilliant and provocative counterargument that in fact it has endured—without the benefit of outside support. A compelling rendering of contemporary political theory, Politics without Vision is sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields.

Politics Without Vision

Politics Without Vision PDF Author: Tracy B. Strong
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226777464
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
Politics without Vision takes up the thought of seven influential thinkers, each of whom attempted to construct a political solution to this problem: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lenin, Schmitt, Heidegger, and Arendt. None of these theorists were liberals nor, excepting possibly Arendt, were they democrats—and some might even be said to have served as handmaidens to totalitarianism. And all to a greater or lesser extent shared the common conviction that the institutions and practices of liberalism are inadequate to the demands and stresses of the present times. In examining their thought, Strong acknowledges the political evil that some of their ideas served to foster but argues that these were not necessarily the only paths their explorations could have taken. By uncovering the turning points in their thought—and the paths not taken—Strong strives to develop a political theory that can avoid, and perhaps help explain, the mistakes of the past while furthering the democratic impulse.

Perpetrators

Perpetrators PDF Author: Antonius C.G.M. Robben
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503634280
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Perpetrators of mass violence are commonly regarded as evil. Their violent nature is believed to make them commit heinous crimes as members of state agencies, insurgencies, terrorist organizations, or racist and supremacist groups. Upon close examination, however, perpetrators are contradictory human beings who often lead unsettlingly ordinary and uneventful lives. Drawing on decades of on-the-ground research with perpetrators of genocide, mass violence, and enforced disappearances in Cambodia and Argentina, Antonius Robben and Alex Hinton explore how researchers go about not just interviewing and writing about perpetrators, but also processing their own emotions and considering how the personal and interpersonal impact of this sort of research informs the texts that emerge from them. Through interlinked ethnographic essays, methodological and theoretical reflections, and dialogues between the two authors, this thought-provoking book conveys practical wisdom for the benefit of other researchers who face ruthless perpetrators and experience turbulent emotions when listening to perpetrators and their victims. Perpetrators rarely regard themselves as such, and fieldwork with perpetrators makes for situations freighted with emotion. Research with perpetrators is a difficult but important part of understanding the causes of and creating solutions to mass violence, and Robben and Hinton use their expertise to provide insightful lessons on the epistemological, ethical, and emotional challenges of ethnographic fieldwork in the wake of atrocity.

The Freedom to Be Free

The Freedom to Be Free PDF Author: Hannah Arendt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525566597
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
This lecture is a brilliant encapsulation of Arendt’s widely influential arguments on revolution, and why the American Revolution—unlike all those preceding it—was uniquely able to install political freedom. “The Freedom to be Free” was first published in Thinking Without a Banister, a varied collection of Arendt’s essays, lectures, reviews, interviews, speeches, and editorials—which, taken together, manifest the relentless activity of her mind and character and contain within them the articulations of wide and sophisticated range of her political thought. A Vintage Shorts Selection. An ebook short.