Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt

Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt ( KPF / 0819 )

1. – 5. 10. 2012 místnost 502 10.00 – 14.00

Ulrika Björk, PhD Uppsala University

On Responsibility

Reading Arendt with Jaspers, Heidegger, Patoč ka, and Rancière

Course Description:What does it mean to be responsible? In “Secrets of European Responsibility”—an interpretation of Jan Patoč ka’s fifth ‘heretical’ essay—Jacques Derrida (2008)argues that “the activating of responsibility (decision, act, praxis) will always have to extend behind and beyond any thematic determination.”Yet in order to be responsible, “it is necessary to respond or answer to what being responsible means.” This course will explore the meaning of responsibility as conceptualized by Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Jan Patoč ka, and Jacques Rancière. Comparing the ethical, political and ontological motivations and contributions of these thinkers will enable us to not only distinguish responsibility in a legal sense from moral and political responsibility. It will also help us see the links between ontological responsibility, historical existence and democratic freedom.

It has been claimed that continental philosophical reflection on ethics distances itself from responsibility in terms of accountability—that is, the accountability of a free autonomous subject —in favor of a questioning of the “ethicality of ethics,” or of what puts us in the situation of having to choose norms and values (Nancy 2002, Raffoul 2010). Arendt’s work complicates this claim. Her essays on responsibility are attempts to come to terms with the question of individual guilt, legal as well as moral. Yet as responses to a concrete historical event—totalitarianism and its crimes against humanity—they also engage in questions concerning the meaning of responsibility insituations where traditional standards and categories for ethical and political judgment have broken down.For Arendt, conscience (the inner Socratic dialogue “between me and myself”), rather than an autonomous free will, is the condition for personal judgment. Politically, she famously insists on a conception of politics modeled on the ancient polisas an institutionally guaranteed realm for freedom, action and care for the world.

The first seminar will introduce Arendt’s conceptions of legal, moral, and political responsibility; conscience; and personal judgment. The additional category of metaphysical guilt (deployed by Jaspers) will introduce the question of the ontological origin of responsibility. The second seminar will further investigatethis question through Heidegger’s reflection on “responsiveness” to the call of conscience in Being and Time, and his articulation of responsibility in terms of being-guilty, care, resoluteness, and possibility. The third seminar will show how Patoč ka draws on and diverges from both Heidegger and Arendby connecting the themes of responsive being, possibility and freedom to a specific conceptionof historical being, one that is “shaken” and “problematic.” Life as problematic emerged with the rise of the Greek polis, which provided a setting in which to act freely and self-reflectively. In light of Arendt’s and Patoč ka’s interpretations of the polis and its incarnation of freedom, our final seminar will consider responsibility in terms of what Rancière has called the “paradox of democratic politics”—the way contemporary democracy both legitimizes and de-legitimizes order. Does the practice of dissensusprovide a more truthful and thus responsible form of democratic politics?

Schedule

October 1 Hannah Arendt: An Intellectual Biography (Lecture given by Ulrika Björk)

Totalitarianism, Guilt and Responsibility (Arendt, Jaspers) (Seminar introduced by U. Björk)

October 3 The Ontological Origin of Responsibility (Heidegger) (Seminar introduced by U. Björk and Martin Nitsche)

October 4 Responsibility, Freedom and History (Patoč ka) (Seminar introduced by U. Björk and Josef Moural)

October 5 Responsibility and Democratic Politics (Rancière) (Seminar introduced by U. Björk and Martin Šimsa)

Summary and closing words (U. Björk and M.Šimsa)

Course Requirements: Students are expected to read all the primary texts in advance and to actively participate in the seminars. In addition, students are required to write one short paper (5-7 pages) or one research paper (12-15 pages) on a topic of their own choice (and in consultation with the professors) in either Czeck or English.

Readings

Required Texts Arendt, Hannah,The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt 1994, pp. 437-459.

--- “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility” in Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, ed. by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books 1994, pp.121-132.

--- “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship” in Responsibility and Judgment, ed. by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books 2003, pp. 17-48. --- “Thinking and Moral Considerations” in Responsibility and Judgment, pp. 159-187.

--- The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press 1958, pp.7-11, 175-207 (Chapter I, “The Human Condition,” section 1, and Chapter V, “Action,” sections 24-28).

Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time. NewYork: HarperCollins 2008, pp. 312-348 (Division Two, Chapter II) [Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 2001].

Jaspers, Karl, The Question of German Guilt. New York: Fordham University Press 2001. [Die Shuldfrage. Von der politischen Hoffnung Deutschlands. München: Piper Verlag 1987].

Patoč ka, Jan, Heretical Essays in the History of Philosophy, ed. by James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court 1996, especially essays 2, 3 and 5 [Kacíř ské eseje o filosofii d ě jin. München: Edice Arkýř , 1980].

Rancière, Jacques, “Does Democracy Mean Something?” in Dissensus, ed. by Steven Corcoran. London: Continuum 2010, pp. 45-61. http://www.scribd.com/doc/84021064/Ranciere-Does-Democracy-Mean-Something

Suggested Texts Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books2006.

--- The Human Condition, pp. 248-325 (“The Vita Activa and the Modern Age”).

Heidegger, Martin, “The Age of the World Picture” inOff the Beaten Track, ed. by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, pp. 57-85. [“Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” in Holzwege. Vittorio Klostermann: Frankfurt am Main 1977].

Patoč ka, Jan, “Negative Platonism: Reflections concerning the Rise, the Scope and the Demise of Metaphysics—and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It” in Jan Patoč ka: Philosophy and Selected Writings, ed. by Erazim Kohák. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press 1989, pp. 175-206 [“Negativní platonismus,”Promě ny 24, no. 1 (1987), pp. 108-35].