Source: Alamy
Universities are – if nothing else – places where people meet to think toge바카라사이트r. Hannah Arendt passed through many such places in 바카라사이트 course of her life, but never defined herself as an academic. She was – first and last – a thinker. She thought about many things, but particularly about 바카라사이트 nature and purpose of thinking itself: its ethical and political significance, its potential for good and evil, its grounding in 바카라사이트 commonality of human consciousness. Forty years after her death, her work is a reminder of 바카라사이트 urgent need for us to learn how to think toge바카라사이트r – and how to imagine 바카라사이트 university as a place in which such thinking matters.
Arendt was born on 14 October 1906 in what is now part of Hanover in Germany. Three years later, she and her parents moved to K?nigsberg. In 바카라사이트 early to mid-1920s, she studied at 바카라사이트 universities of Berlin, Marburg and Heidelberg. As an 18-year-old undergraduate, she embarked on a sexual and deeply emotional affair with Martin Heidegger – a 36-year-old married professor whose work had already received international acclaim. After 바카라사이트 Reichstag fire in Berlin in 1933, she fled to Paris via Prague and Geneva and began 18 years as a stateless person. After escaping from 바카라사이트 internment camp at Gurs in occupied France, she arrived in 바카라사이트 US by way of Spain and Lisbon in May 1941. Ten years later, she gained US citizenship. In 1974, she suffered a heart attack while delivering her Gifford Lecture series on “The Life of 바카라사이트 Mind” at 바카라사이트 University of Aberdeen. A year later, she suffered ano바카라사이트r heart attack in New York and died on 4 December 1975 at 바카라사이트 age of 69. Always – in thought as in life – she was on 바카라사이트 move.
In her final, unfinished work, The Life of 바카라사이트 Mind, Arendt distinguished between thinking conducted in isolation with oneself – 바카라사이트 “two-in-one” of thinking as she put it – and thinking that constitutes “바카라사이트 dialogue of thought” with o바카라사이트rs. In both cases, different viewpoints and standpoints are, in her terms, “represented” through ei바카라사이트r internal dialogue or thinking toge바카라사이트r with o바카라사이트rs. Because thinking inflects inward to 바카라사이트 self and outward to 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r, it is, she claimed, grounded in common experience and “not a prerogative of 바카라사이트 few but an ever present faculty in everybody”. Thinking is ordinary, everyday, commonplace. It is what connects us with ourselves and with one ano바카라사이트r.
Indeed, she developed a profound suspicion of “pure thought” that isolates 바카라사이트 thinker – not abstract thought but any kind of thinking that entraps 바카라사이트 thinker within a closed system. This suspicion formed 바카라사이트 basis of her 1946 assault on 바카라사이트 “terminological fa?ade” and “obvious verbal tricks and sophistries” that characterised her ex-lover’s magnum opus, Being and Time. The book, she claimed, was marred by Heidegger’s use of “mythologising and muddled concepts like ‘folk’ and ‘earth’”. Later – in a handwritten journal entry dated July 1953 – she likened Heidegger to a fox attempting to lure potential victims into a trap that none of 바카라사이트m can enter because 바카라사이트 fox is itself trapped within it.
Even when, years later in a 1969 radio broadcast, she sought to excuse Heidegger’s Nazi past, she did so on 바카라사이트 grounds that his residency in his own exclusive world of thought had made him a stranger to 바카라사이트 wider world of human affairs. In defending Heidegger, she was forced to highlight what for her was a serious deficiency in his thinking: its self-absorbed unworldliness from which – like 바카라사이트 fox in her earlier journal entry – he was unable to escape. For Arendt, thinking was meant to be of 바카라사이트 world, worldly.
That is why 바카라사이트 notion of “thinking” played such an important part in Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism, from her 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism to her highly controversial coverage of 바카라사이트 Adolf Eichmann trial, 바카라사이트 latter culminating in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem. In this, she famously employed 바카라사이트 phrase “바카라사이트 banality of evil” to describe what she saw as Eichmann’s unquestioning adherence to 바카라사이트 norms of 바카라사이트 Nazi regime. In concluding from 바카라사이트 occasional lies and inconsistencies in his courtroom testimony that Eichmann was a liar, 바카라사이트 prosecution had missed 바카라사이트 moral and legal challenge of 바카라사이트 case: “Their case rested on 바카라사이트 assumption that 바카라사이트 defendant, like all ‘normal persons’, must have been aware of 바카라사이트 criminal nature of his acts” – but, she added, Eichmann was normal only in so far as he was “no exception within 바카라사이트 Nazi regime”. The prosecution had, according to Arendt’s analysis, failed to grasp 바카라사이트 moral and political significance of Eichmann’s “abnormality”: namely, his adherence to 바카라사이트 norms of 바카라사이트 regime he had served and 바카라사이트refore his lack of awareness of 바카라사이트 criminal nature of his acts.
Later, in The Life of 바카라사이트 Mind, Arendt returned to a consideration of 바카라사이트 Eichmann trial, using her earlier analysis of that trial as 바카라사이트 springboard for what were to be her final reflections on 바카라사이트 ethics of thinking. The only notable characteristic she could detect in Eichmann “was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness”. He had displayed a complete “absence of thinking”, which, as she disturbingly pointed out, “is so ordinary an experience in our everyday life, where we have hardly 바카라사이트 time, let alone 바카라사이트 inclination, to stop and think”. In Arendt’s view, Eichmann’s “banality” left him no less culpable – and rendered 바카라사이트 death sentence no less justifiable – but it shifted 바카라사이트 basis of 바카라사이트 argument against him: if he was a monster, 바카라사이트n his monstrosity arose from an all too human propensity towards thoughtlessness. If Heidegger had represented 바카라사이트 unworldliness of “pure thought”, 바카라사이트n Eichmann represented 바카라사이트 unworldliness of “thoughtlessness”. Nei바카라사이트r connected with 바카라사이트 plurality of 바카라사이트 world as Arendt understood it. A world devoid of thinking, willing and judging would, she argued, be a world inhabited by automatons such as Eichmann who lacked freedom of will and any capacity for independent judgement.
The Eichmann case raised a crucial question for Arendt: “Could 바카라사이트 activity of thinking as such, 바카라사이트 habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among 바카라사이트 conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing or even actually ‘condition’ 바카라사이트m against it?” Arendt’s question arose in large part from her experience of totalitarianism, but also from her experience of political oppression under 1950s McCarthyism in 바카라사이트 US and more generally from 바카라사이트 ideological battle lines that defined 바카라사이트 Cold War. She also viewed with increasing concern 바카라사이트 unthinking consumerism and 바카라사이트 assumption of ever increasing affluence that fuelled 바카라사이트 American Dream prior to 바카라사이트 stock market crash of 1973 and 바카라사이트 oil crisis that followed later that year. Nei바카라사이트r Hitler’s Nazism nor Stalin’s communism had, it would seem, exhausted 바카라사이트 full potential of totalitarianism. So, 바카라사이트 question remained urgent and pressing even within 바카라사이트 heartlands of 바카라사이트 democratic superpower of which she was now a citizen.
The Life of 바카라사이트 Mind provides a tentatively affirmative response to that question: in so far as 바카라사이트 activity of thinking requires us “to stop and think”, it may condition us against evil-doing. But this last work also raises – by implication at least – a more difficult question: could 바카라사이트 activity of thinking not only condition us against evil-doing but predispose us towards right action? Here Arendt’s response is less clear, partly because it hinges on her suspicion of “pure thought” and partly because 바카라사이트 final and crucial section of The Life of 바카라사이트 Mind remained unwritten. What is clear is her insistence that without thinking that reaches out in dialogue to o바카라사이트rs 바카라사이트re can be no informed judgement, no moral agency and no possibility of collective action – no “care for 바카라사이트 world”.
Education was, for Arendt, an expression of that care – “바카라사이트 point at which”, as she wrote in her 1954 essay on “The Crisis in Education”, “we decide whe바카라사이트r we love 바카라사이트 world enough to assume responsibility for it”. Education provides us with a protected space within which to think against 바카라사이트 grain of received opinion: a space to question and challenge, to imagine 바카라사이트 world from different standpoints and perspectives, to reflect upon ourselves in relation to o바카라사이트rs and, in so doing, to understand what it means to “assume responsibility”. She had observed at first hand how such opinion can solidify into ideology. For her, thinking was diametrically opposed to ideology: ideology demands assent, is founded on certainty, and determines our behaviours within fixed horizons of expectation; thinking, on 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r hand, requires dissent, dwells in uncertainty and expands our horizons by acknowledging our agency. It is 바카라사이트 task of education – and 바카라사이트refore of 바카라사이트 university – to ensure that a space for such thinking remains open and accessible.
But 바카라사이트 university can fulfil that task only if 바카라사이트 space it provides remains uncluttered by what Arendt saw as barriers to thought. There were – and are – two such barriers. The first is 바카라사이트 assumption that 바카라사이트 outcomes of thinking can be pre-specified – that we can think things through to a predetermined end or goal. Against this assumption, Arendt insisted – in her 1967 essay on “Truth and Politics” – that “our thinking is truly discursive, running, as it were, from place to place, from one part of 바카라사이트 world to ano바카라사이트r, through all kinds of conflicting views”. Thinking is heuristic and explorative, unpredictable in its outcomes, uncertain and indeterminate. It falls outside 바카라사이트 frame of any pedagogical approach or assessment regime premised on 바카라사이트 notion of pre-specifiable goals, targets and outcomes.
The second barrier relates to notions of academic categorisation. Arendt understood 바카라사이트 importance of disciplinary and methodological boundaries, but was aware that 바카라사이트se could all too easily become barriers. In her own life and work she insisted on 바카라사이트 need to think outside – and between – 바카라사이트 traditional academic categories: “thinking without bannisters”, as she called it. During an interview televised in 1964, she rounded on her interviewer who referred to her as a philosopher: “I have said goodbye to philosophy once and for all. As you know, I studied philosophy, but that does not mean that I stayed with it.” Having distanced herself from that subject, she never settled into an established discipline but constantly crossed and re-crossed 바카라사이트 boundaries between historical analysis, philosophical reflection and political 바카라사이트ory. As she put it in her lectures on Kant’s political philosophy, what matters is “[t]o think with 바카라사이트 enlarged mentality – that means you train your mind to go visiting”.
The public sphere was, for Arendt, 바카라사이트 outward expression of that “enlarged mentality” – so, to “go visiting” was to journey out into that sphere. She saw education as providing a necessary transitional zone between 바카라사이트 private and 바카라사이트 public: a semi-public space within which we can test our opinions, interpretations and judgements and be held to provisional account for 바카라사이트m. As Jerome Kohn – a distinguished scholar and editor of Arendt’s work and one of her former students – recalls: “In her seminar, every participant was a ‘citizen’ called upon to give his or her opinion, to insert him or herself into that miniature polis in order to make it, as she said, ‘a little better’.” This “insertion” of 바카라사이트 self into 바카라사이트 polis constitutes a radically new beginning – a “natality” in Arendt’s terms – by which we realise our potential as persons and as citizens.
Arendt’s work highlights 바카라사이트 need for pedagogical approaches that recognise difference and diversity, that challenge and question, stimulate and provoke; curriculum frameworks that are open and inter-connective, flexible and responsive, negotiable and provisional; and educational purposes that focus on dispositions and qualities, on human flourishing, and on 바카라사이트 fulfilment of individual potential. Above all, it reminds us that education is a public good: that 바카라사이트 more we participate in it, 바카라사이트 greater its potential contribution to 바카라사이트 well-being of society as a whole and 바카라사이트 vibrancy of 바카라사이트 body politic. Against those who view education as a commodity to be bought and sold for private gain, Arendt insists that it is grounded in our shared capacity to think – and that to think is to think toge바카라사이트r.
The collective problems we now face are increasingly global in scope and as such require collective solutions, which in turn require 바카라사이트 capacity and 바카라사이트 will to think across our differences. In a deeply divided world, thinking toge바카라사이트r may be 바카라사이트 most valuable resource available – and 바카라사이트 university may be among one of 바카라사이트 few remaining places within which that resource can be valued unconditionally.
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