Quote of the Weeks
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Hannah Arendt and The Poetics of “The Pursuit of Happiness”
Clifford Brooks“The pursuit of happiness” must be the most poetic phrase in the Constitution. Of course, the language throughout is elegant, the “felicity of pen” of Thomas Jefferson. However, his way about the pursuit of happiness grabs me by the heartstrings. No doubt this term lifted from Kant’s, “life, liberty, and property’ drew Arendt’s attention.
Quote of the Weeks
A Higher Understanding of Freedom
This essay was first published April 25, 2016.By Richard A. Barrett
Politicians, despite their divergent views and their distaste for each other, share at least this common ground: they believe in the vigorous pursuit and defense of freedom. In campaign speeches and party platforms freedom is one of the most frequently used terms. Freedom is set forth as a goal, as something that goes hand and hand with democracy.
Tough Talks
By Charlotte AlbertThis week, we republish a QotW essay from one of our current students here at Bard College.
In our current political climate, media has exacerbated and publicized social tensions. Mostly these are tensions that have always existed but have not always been issues of large-scale public contention. The proliferation of mass media has led to increased political divisiveness...
Power, Violence, & Political Action
By Yasemin SariPower is indeed of the essence of all government, but violence is not. Violence is by nature instrumental; like all means, it always stands in need of guidance and justification through the end it pursues. And what needs justification by something else cannot be the essence of anything.— Hannah Arendt
Time for Arendt
“In the last analysis, the human world is always the product of man’s amor mundi, a human artifice whose potential immortality is always subject to the mortality of those who build it and the natality of those who come to live in it.”“What do we do now?”
Why Arendt Refuses to Answer
Chiara T. Ricciardone is Provost and Faculty Member of the Activist Graduate School and an NEH Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center of Bard College (2018–19).
The Refugee Question
This week, we republish a Quote from Nikita Nelin on Arendt and the plight of refugees.Three “Ideals”
This week's Quote is written by Jana Schmidt, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center in 2016-2017 and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Humanities at Bard College in 2017.To Judge Timelessness
Nikita Nelin, associate fellow at the Center, writes this week's Quote.Should Activists Use Violence to Create Social Change?
By Micah WhiteIn a 1967, Hannah Arendt had a discussion with Noam Chomsky and other prominent antiwar movement intellectuals on “The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act?” Their chat was recorded and published in an obscure volume on “Dissent, Power, and Confrontation.”