Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics

Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics

Craig Calhoun and John McGowan, editors
Afterword by Martin Jay

$27.50 Paper
ISBN: 0-8166-2917-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-2917-6

Eminent contributors consider what Hannah Arendt means in today’s public debates.

Is politics really nothing more than power relations, competing interests and claims for recognition, conflicting assertions of "simple" truths? No thinker has argued more passionately against this narrow view than Hannah Arendt, and no one has more to say to those who bring questions of meaning, identity, value, and transcendence to our impoverished public life. This volume brings leading figures in philosophy, political theory, intellectual history, and literary theory into a dialogue about Arendt's work and its significance for today's fractious identity politics, public ethics, and civic life

For each essay—on the fate of politics in a postmodern, post-Marxist era; on the connection of nonfoundationalist ethics and epistemology to democracy; on the conditions conducive to a vital public sphere; on the recalcitrant problems of violence and evil—the volume includes extended responses, and a concluding essay by Martin Jay responding to all the others. Ranging from feminism to aesthetics to the discourse of democracy, the essays explore how an encounter with Arendt reconfigures, disrupts, and revitalizes what passes for public debate in our day. Together they forcefully demonstrate the power of Arendt's work as a splendid provocation and a living resource

Contributors: Richard Bernstein, Anthony Cascardi, Susan Bickford, Kim Curtis, Lisa Disch, Nancy Fraser, Martin Jay, Steven Leonard, Kirstie McClure, Dana Villa, and Eli Zaretsky.

Craig Calhoun is professor and chair of sociology at New York University. He is the author of Nationalism (1998).

John McGowan is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

376 pages | 5 7/8 x 9 | 1997
Contradictions of Modernity Series, volume 6



Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics Craig Calhoun and John McGowan, editors Afterword by Martin Jay		$27.50 Paper ISBN: 0-8166-2917-X ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-2917-6
Eminent contributors consider what Hannah Arendt means in today’s public debates. Is politics really nothing more than power relations, competing interests and claims for recognition, conflicting assertions of "simple" truths? No thinker has argued more passionately against this narrow view than Hannah Arendt, and no one has more to say to those who bring questions of meaning, identity, value, and transcendence to our impoverished public life. This volume brings leading figures in philosophy, political theory, intellectual history, and literary theory into a dialogue about Arendt's work and its significance for today's fractious identity politics, public ethics, and civic life For each essay—on the fate of politics in a postmodern, post-Marxist era; on the connection of nonfoundationalist ethics and epistemology to democracy; on the conditions conducive to a vital public sphere; on the recalcitrant problems of violence and evil—the volume includes extended responses, and a concluding essay by Martin Jay responding to all the others. Ranging from feminism to aesthetics to the discourse of democracy, the essays explore how an encounter with Arendt reconfigures, disrupts, and revitalizes what passes for public debate in our day. Together they forcefully demonstrate the power of Arendt's work as a splendid provocation and a living resource Contributors: Richard Bernstein, Anthony Cascardi, Susan Bickford, Kim Curtis, Lisa Disch, Nancy Fraser, Martin Jay, Steven Leonard, Kirstie McClure, Dana Villa, and Eli Zaretsky. Craig Calhoun is professor and chair of sociology at New York University. He is the author of Nationalism (1998). John McGowan is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 376 pages \| 5 7/8 x 9 \| 1997 Contradictions of Modernity Series, volume 6