{"id":32,"date":"2016-05-20T19:52:16","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T19:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/?page_id=32"},"modified":"2016-11-15T11:17:42","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T16:17:42","slug":"5-13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/5-13\/","title":{"rendered":"5\/13 | Hannah Arendt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zHPgsosfz3c\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0Arendt on <em>Willing<\/em><\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">with <a href=\"https:\/\/politicalscience.yale.edu\/people\/seyla-benhabib\">Seyla Benhabib<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lett.unipmn.it\/docenti\/forti\/\">Simona Forti<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/polisci.barnard.edu\/profiles\/ayten-gundogdu\">Ayten Gundogdu<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/political-science.uchicago.edu\/people\/faculty\/zerilli.shtml\">Linda Zerilli<\/a><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Although Hannah Arendt had, in\u00a0<em>The Human Condition\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>Between Past and Future<\/em>, sustained important conversations with Nietzsche, it is really only in 1975 that Arendt would engage Nietzsche\u2019s thought in the most direct and sustained manner\u2014in her chapter titled \u201cNietzsche\u2019s repudiation of the Will\u201d in Volume 2 of\u00a0<em>The Life of the Mind<\/em>, the volume on \u201cWilling\u201d or, as Arendt would say, on \u201cthe problem of Freedom.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[i]<\/a>\u00a0By that time though, in the mid-1970s, Nietzsche had already been recuperated from the ignominy of his fascist appropriations and made part of the philosophical tradition\u2014paradoxically, in the case of Hannah Arendt, by Martin Heidegger primarily. Nietzsche would thus become, for Arendt, one philosopher among others in a lengthy philosophical history of the concept of \u201cwilling\u201d\u2014a philosophical conversation that spans the Apostle Paul, Epictetus, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, to or through Nietzsche ultimately to Heidegger, and then beyond him too to the concept of judgment itself. And it is in these pages that she would articulate her imposing diagnosis of Heidegger\u2019s reading of Nietzsche: \u201cto put it bluntly, the first volume explicates Nietzsche by going along with him, while the second is written in a subdued but unmistakable polemical tone.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\">[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In this ongoing conversation, Nietzsche plays a pivotal role, but no more pivotal perhaps than Augustine, Aquinas, or those other philosophers of the will. In several passages, Arendt lauds Nietzsche: \u201cNo one knew this better than Nietzsche,\u201d Arendt exclaims as she introduces, in her volume on \u201cThinking,\u201d the dissolution of the suprasensory world.<a href=\"#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\">[iii]<\/a>\u00a0In the second volume, Arendt describes Nietzsche as \u201cthe greatest master\u201d of the art of turning-the-tables, with \u201chis mercilessly honest thought-experiments.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn4\" name=\"_ednref4\">[iv]<\/a>\u00a0Elsewhere she refers to his \u201cunsurpassed clarity.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn5\" name=\"_ednref5\">[v]<\/a>\u00a0But despite these asides, the relation to Nietzsche remains ambivalent.<\/p>\n<p>In many ways, one can hardly think of two more different sensibilities than Arendt and Nietzsche. The civic republican and participatory democratic dimensions of Arendt\u2019s thought seem utterly at odds with the radical individualism of the over-man. Nietzsche was not a man of the\u00a0<em>polis<\/em>, so much as someone who would try to find there converts to his vision of human overcoming. In other respects, though, the two seem to be kin, especially when it comes to the importance of \u201cbecoming\u201d and the freedom that \u201cbecoming\u201d injects into their world views. Also in their disenchantment with their respective modernities, with a certain tragic quality, and all the losses that have accompanied historical progress. One can draw a line from Nietzsche\u2019s thoughts on becoming to Arendt\u2019s writings on beginnings. And when she states, in\u00a0<em>On Revolution<\/em>, that \u201crevolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning,\u201d<a href=\"#_edn6\" name=\"_ednref6\">[vi]<\/a>\u00a0the importance of new beginnings and of taking responsibility for one\u2019s actions seem to have a resonance with Nietzschean notions of invention and becoming. As Arendt would write in her introduction to\u00a0<em>Willing<\/em>, \u201cNo doubt every man, by virtue of his birth, is a new beginning, and his power of beginning may well correspond to this fact of the human condition.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn7\" name=\"_ednref7\">[vii]<\/a>\u00a0That, of course, makes one immediately think of Nietzsche\u2019s becoming\u2014far more than Heidegger\u2019s being.<\/p>\n<p>Nietzsche then is an influential figure in Arendt\u2019s thinking. As Bonnie Honig suggests, \u201cFrom Nietzsche, Arendt borrows not only the stabilizing practice of promising, theorized by Nietzsche in the second essay of\u00a0<em>Genealogy<\/em>, but also that of forgiveness, a process of \u2018constant mutual release\u2019 theorized by Nietzsche as a practice of dismissing in the first essay of\u00a0<em>Genealogy<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn8\" name=\"_ednref8\">[viii]<\/a>\u00a0But Nietzsche is never\u00a0<em>the<\/em>\u00a0formative interlocutor to Arendt. And he does not escape her critique. His writings on the will to power, Arendt would characterize in her postscriptum on thinking, ultimately, as \u201cself-defeating.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn9\" name=\"_ednref9\">[ix]<\/a>\u00a0In the end, Arendt leaves Nietzsche\u2019s \u201crepudiation\u201d of the will behind in order to turn to the more important matter, on her view, of judging. That volume was cut short, though, by her untimely death.<\/p>\n<p>In this sense, the relationship between Nietzsche and Arendt differs from those that we explored previously with Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze\u2014and even Heidegger. If Heidegger\u2019s turn to Nietzsche shortly before and during World War II fundamentally transformed Heidegger\u2019s thought, the same cannot be said for Arendt.<\/p>\n<p>What then is the proper way to read Arendt&#8217;s Nietzsche? How would it affect our reading of Arendt? How might it impact our interpretations of Nietzsche? And what does it tell us for the pressing and critical issues of politics today, in these dark times?\u00a0To help us work through these issues, we are privileged to have with us four of the world\u2019s leading experts on Arendt: Seyla Benhabib, Simona Forti, Linda Zerilli, and Ayten Gundogdu.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Nietzsche 5\/13!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-549 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/files\/2016\/05\/orange-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"orange\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/files\/2016\/05\/orange-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/files\/2016\/05\/orange-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/files\/2016\/05\/orange-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/files\/2016\/05\/orange.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">[Read full post\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/introduction-to-arendt-and-nietzsche\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. \u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt]<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Notes<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\">[i]<\/a>\u00a0Arendt,\u00a0<em>Willing<\/em>, p. 3.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\">[ii]<\/a>\u00a0Arendt,\u00a0<em>Willing<\/em>, p. 173.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref3\" name=\"_edn3\">[iii]<\/a>\u00a0Arendt,\u00a0<em>Thinking<\/em>, p. 10.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref4\" name=\"_edn4\">[iv]<\/a>\u00a0Arendt,\u00a0<em>Willing<\/em>, p. 151.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref5\" name=\"_edn5\">[v]<\/a>\u00a0Arendt,\u00a0<em>Willing<\/em>, p. 157.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref6\" name=\"_edn6\">[vi]<\/a>\u00a0Arendt,\u00a0<em>On Revolution<\/em>\u00a0(New York, 1965), p. 21.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref7\" name=\"_edn7\">[vii]<\/a>\u00a0Arendt,\u00a0<em>Willing<\/em>, p. 6.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref8\" name=\"_edn8\">[viii]<\/a>\u00a0Honig 1993: 530.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref9\" name=\"_edn9\">[ix]<\/a>\u00a0Arendt,\u00a0<em>Thinking<\/em>, p. 214.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref10\" name=\"_edn10\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">At the end of her life, Hannah Arendt was writing a series of volumes on <em>The Life of the Mind<\/em>, the second of which is called &#8220;Willing.&#8221; In that work, Arendt most directly engaged the thought of Nietzsche in relation to Heidegger and others. This session will explore Arendt&#8217;s Nietzsche.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Arendt on Willing with Seyla Benhabib, Simona Forti, Ayten Gundogdu, and Linda Zerilli Although Hannah Arendt had, in\u00a0The Human Condition\u00a0and\u00a0Between Past and Future, sustained important conversations with Nietzsche, it is really only in 1975 that Arendt would engage Nietzsche\u2019s thought&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/5-13\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-32","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}