Conference: Hidden Tradition – Untimely Actuality?

The Heinrich Böll Foundation is hosting a three-day conference in Berlin to mark the 100th anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s birthday. The focus in the individual lectures, discussions, and debates will be on the tension between the lines of traditions to which Hannah Arendt’s philosophy belongs and on contemporary approaches to her thinking.<br> <br> Hannah Arendt grew to intellectual maturity within two intersecting milieus: political-cultural Zionism and the philosophy of existence of the 1920’s that presented itself as revolutionary and deconstructivist. Her friends Ernst Grumach, Kurt Blumenfeld, Hans Jonas, and others, familiarised her with a context-specific form of Jewish thought. Her teachers Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers introduced her to the in-depth critique of traditional metaphysics. Like her friends, Arendt was involved throughout her life in a critical encounter with this "dual" legacy, the two parts of which, from today’s perspective, seem to be mutually exclusive. The intersections and contradictions between the two strands of this legacy and the way they are treated today will take centre stage in the first part of the conference, under the title <b>"Hidden Tradition"</b>.<br> <br> In the second part of the conference, <b>"Untimely Actuality?"</b>, the focus will shift to the approaches in Arendtian thinking that might apply to present-day problems and to the relevance of her political philosophy with respect to the general state of politics and democracy today. There is still tension in the relationship between social criticism, new social forms, and the self-empowerment of previously marginal groups on the one hand, and institutionalised politics and the dominion of law on the other. The processes of globalisation have brought a new dimension to this ambivalence between institutional stabilisation and social dynamics.<br> <br> In the context of contemporary political debate, Hannah Arendt’s political theory is primarily invoked in the support of "civil society", the "community of citizens" or "civic engagement." Associated with this is a criticism of the "domineering state", "social bureaucracy", and a lack of "civic virtues". Should one adopt a sceptical stance toward the state in one’s reading of "The Human Condition" today, or should the latter serve as a basis from which to defend democratic statehood from its neo-liberal and neoconservative opponents? Do we need institutional transformation in order to revitalise the democratic function of institutions? Can Arendt’s paradigm of the political nation and her republican approach be made productive with respect to today’s problems? Is it possible to set a process in motion that will allow the creation of a plural world public in a world coalescing into one unit both politically and with respect to the media?<br>