Bearing Logs on Our Shoulders

Arendt Center Academic Director, Roger Berkowitz, has recently published

Bearing Logs on Our Shoulders: Reconciliation, Non-Reconciliation, and the Building of a Common World. in Theory & Event (vol. 14.1).

On her first return visit to Germany in 1950, Hannah Arendt went walking in the Black Forest with Martin Heidegger. They discussed revenge, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Upon her return to New York, Arendt began her diary of thoughts, her Denktagebuch. The first seven pages of Arendt's Denktagebuch argue that reconciliation—and not revenge or forgiveness—is an essential example of political judgment. The connection between reconciliation and judgment means that only reconciliation, and not revenge or forgiveness, can respond to wrongs in a way that fosters the political project of building and preserving a common world. This essay argues that the question—"Ought I to reconcile myself to the world?"—is, for Arendt, the pressing political question of our age.

You can read the whole article on Project Muse, Here

And you can download a PDF of the essay here: Reconciliation, Non-Reconciliation, and the Building of a Common World.