QUILTING POINTS:

When we talk about lying […] let us remember that the lie did not creep into politics by some accident of human sinfulness. Moral outrage, for this reason alone, is not likely to make it disappear. –––Arendt, 'Lying in Politics' The ultimate aim was neither power nor profit […] The goal now was the image itself. ––– I bid. In what promises to be an excruciatingly topical session, we'll be reading Arendt's 'Lying in Politics' next week, with Derrida's 'History of the Lie' as secondary material. Arendt's essay responds to the 'Pentagon Papers' , the U.S. Department of Defence's report on their involvement in the Vietnam and Korean Wars. These papers were leaked by T he New York Times amidst the furore of the Watergate scandal; they exposed 'the extravagant lengths to which the commitment to nontruthfulness in politics went on at the highest levels of government' (Arendt, 4). The response we find in 'Lying in Po...

Before drawing up the constitution of a new body politic, we shall have to create – –not merely discover – –a new foundation for human community as such. – – –Hannah Arendt, concluding remarks to The Origins of Totalitarianism For our next session we will be joined by Patrick Hayden, Professor of Political Theory and International Relations at St Andrews, who will  present his paper "The Heart of Politics: Amor Mundi and Human Plurality" .  Prof. Hayden has published widely on Arendt, including: a monograph,  Political Evil in a Global Age: Hannah Arendt and International Theory (2010), an edited collection,  Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts (2014), and numerous articles and chapters, the most recent of which explores Arendt, refugees, and world-making. Hayden's other publications include  Camus and the Challenge of Political Thought: Between Despair and Hope (2016) and the co-authored  Recognition and Global Politics: Critical Encounters between State a...

 E ven if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the … achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed … The “victorious” Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded inside ever threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defence to a degree that would submerge all other interests and activities. — Hannah   Arendt, 'To Save the Jewish Homeland' In this session we will explore excerpts from Arendt's so-called 'Jewish writings'. Starting with her incendiary essays from the early 1940s, we will trace her development of ideas about the struggle for Jewish emancipation, culminating in the prophetic 'To Save the Jewish Homeland'. These writings bring out some of the questions of political violence and revolution that we have examined in previous sessions. They also document Arendt's views regarding Jewish nationalism as well as the Israel and Palestine conflict (which, by the time of 'To Save the Jewish ...

No one engaged in thought about history and politics can remain unaware of the enormous role violence has always played in human affairs. — Hannah Arendt,   On Violence Arendt’s dismissal of African histories, literatures, and languages as nonexistent subjects is troubling. [...] She presents Blacks as trapped in a dream world of escapism and suffering from irrational rage, while desribing a "potentially" violent backlash from the white community as perfectly rational. And as with her analysis of the violence of imperialism/colonialism and the violence of decolonisation, Arendt is far less condemning ofthe oppressors' offensive violence than she is of the defensive violence of the oppressed. —Kathryn T. Gines, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question Hannah Arendt's On Violence (1970)   is a short but multifaceted text. Pitched as a direct response to the events and debates of the 1960s, Arendt's reflections set out to critique the  escalating civil right...

'In a constellation that poses the threat of total annihilation through war against the hope for emancipation of all mankind through revolution [...] no cause is left but the most ancient of all [...] the cause of freedom versus tyranny.’ Hannah Arendt, On Revolution In our next session we'll be grappling with "The Meaning of Revolution". We'll explore Arendt's challenge to  the Marxist idealisation of the French Revolution, and her argument that we should take inspiration from America instead. Here, Arendt brings her conceptions of freedom and political action to bear, and proposes revolutionary constitutionalism as the means for emancipation. Is this the answer to the question, 'what happens the day after the revolution'?  Where? LHRI, Seminar room 1 When? Thursday, 2nd Feburary, 5-7pm Primary reading: "The Meaning of Revolution", from On Revolution . PDF here .

In the Jewish tradition there is a concept, hard to define and yet concrete enough, which we know as Ahabath Israel : "Love of the Jewish people..." In you, dear Hannah, as in so many intellectuals who came from the German Left, I find little trace of this. [...] Would there not have been a place [in Eichmann in Jerusalem ] for what I can only describe with that modest German word  – " Herzenstakt "? – – – Gershom Scholem, Letter to Hannah Arendt, June 23 1963 At stake in Arendt’s tactlessness [...] is a crucial, although often unacknowledged strand in her thought as a whole, namely the issue of the relation between politics and feeling.  – – – Simon Swift, 'Hannah Arendt's Tactlessness' Our first session of 2017 will be run by guest speaker Simon Swift, director of the Northern Theory School and Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Geneva . Simon has published extensively on Hannah Arendt - from articles such as  ...

'Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality––whatever it may be. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Our second session on  The Origins of Totalitarianism will grapple with Arendt's investigation into Nazism and the Jewish question. Focusing specifically on Arendt's chapter 'The Jews and Society', we will explore Arendt's conviction that Jews were by no means innocent victims, but rather agents who acted and re-acted within the public realm. This line of thought leads Arendt to a highly controversial question: if Jews were not innocent victims of Nazi violence, then do they in some way share the responsibility for that violence? J oin us for our final meeting before the winter break – expect vegan wine and snacks! Where?:   LHRI, Seminar Room 1  When?:  Thursday 1st December, 5-7pm Primary reading :  Hannah Arendt, 'The Jews and S ociety', in  The Origi...