The Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney invites you to a Master Class with Peg Birmingham (Philosophy, De Paul University) on Hannah Arendt and the Question of History in Politics: the first draft of The Human Condition Wednesday October 13, 2-4 pm Room 1.1.114, UWS-Bankstown Campus
Peg Birmingham's synopsis for the class: In the forward to Fragwurdige Traditionsbestande im Politischen Denken der Gegenwart, (roughly translated: The Questionable Remains of Tradition in Political Thought of the Present) Hannah Arendt states that these essays, written in the years 1953-1956 and published in 1957,* are unified around a reflection on the modern break in tradition and the subsequent attempt in the modern age to replace tradition with a concept of history. At the same time, and as the title suggests, these essays reflect on what remains of the tradition in our current political thought, a thought that is at once marked by the collapse of tradition even as it is still haunted by it. In other words, for Arendt, the breakdown in tradition does not necessarily mean that traditional concepts have lost their hold on the present age, but instead, these concepts now have a tyrannical claim on our thinking which springs from our no longer having any sense of the origin and original vitality of these concepts. In a gesture very similar to Heidegger's at the outset of Sein und Zeit, Arendt suggests that the aim of these essays is not merely critique, but at the same time, an attempt to discover the source of traditional concepts in order to renew their original sense which would in turn open new possibilities for political thought today. Insofar as these essays take up most of the themes in The Human Condition, it is my claim that together they form the first draft of The Human Condition. As a first draft, they shed important illumination not only on the central concepts of The Human Condition, specifically, the concepts of action, natality, and the public space, but also the general direction of Arendt's political thought after the writing of The Origins of Totalitarianism. Preparation for the class: Read the essays "Tradition and the Modern Age," "The Concept of History," and "What is Authority" which comprise part of the volume, Between Past and Future (*English translations) and also The Human Condition (specifically the Prologue and Chapter 6). Peg Birmingham is the author of Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: the predicament of common responsibility (Indiana 2006). She has been publishing essays on Hannah Arendt in a number of recent collections including "A Lying World Order: Political Deception and the Threat of Totalitarianism" in R. Berkowitz, J. Katz and T. Keenan Thinking in Dark Times; Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (Fordham UP, 2010). Rsvp: Chris Tobin CCPP - c.to...@uws.edu.au
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