Political Theory and the Enlarged Mentality

Political Theory and the Enlarged Mentality PDF Author: Stephen Acreman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317212398
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
In this book, Stephen Acreman follows the development and reception of a hitherto under-analyzed concept central to modern and postmodern political theory: the Kantian ein erweiterte Denkungsart, or enlarged mentality. While the enlarged mentality plays a major role in a number of key texts underpinning contemporary democratic theory, including works by Arendt, Gadamer, Habermas, and Lyotard, this is the first in-depth study of the concept encompassing and bringing together its full range of expressions. A number of attempts to place the enlarged mentality at the service of particular ideals–the politics of empathy, of consensus, of agonistic contest, or of moral righteousness–are challenged and redirected. In its exploration of the enlarged mentality, the book asks what it means to assume a properly political stance, and, in giving as the answer ‘facing reality together’, it uncovers a political theory attentive to the facts and events that concern us, and uniquely well suited to the ecological politics of our time.

Political Theory and the Enlarged Mentality

Political Theory and the Enlarged Mentality PDF Author: Stephen Acreman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317212398
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
In this book, Stephen Acreman follows the development and reception of a hitherto under-analyzed concept central to modern and postmodern political theory: the Kantian ein erweiterte Denkungsart, or enlarged mentality. While the enlarged mentality plays a major role in a number of key texts underpinning contemporary democratic theory, including works by Arendt, Gadamer, Habermas, and Lyotard, this is the first in-depth study of the concept encompassing and bringing together its full range of expressions. A number of attempts to place the enlarged mentality at the service of particular ideals–the politics of empathy, of consensus, of agonistic contest, or of moral righteousness–are challenged and redirected. In its exploration of the enlarged mentality, the book asks what it means to assume a properly political stance, and, in giving as the answer ‘facing reality together’, it uncovers a political theory attentive to the facts and events that concern us, and uniquely well suited to the ecological politics of our time.

Judgment, Imagination, and Politics

Judgment, Imagination, and Politics PDF Author: Ronald Beiner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847699711
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Fourteen contributions from international academics examine the themes of judgment, imagination, and politics in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Immanuel Kant. In the introduction, Beiner and Nedelsky (both political science, U. of Toronto) discuss the problem of political judgment and the recognition of subjectivity. Other topics include the challenges of diversity to the law, the public use of reason, and Arendt's lectures on Kant. c. Book News Inc.

The Judge and the Spectator

The Judge and the Spectator PDF Author: Joke Johannetta Hermsen
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042907812
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Since early texts as "Thinking and Politics", Arendt had highlighted the contrast between philosophical and political thinking and compelled herself to find a satisfactory answer to the question: "how do philosophy and politics relate?". In her last work "Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy" (1982), Arendt analyses the "political" dimensions of Kant's critical thinking. To think critically implies taking the viewpoints of others into account: one has to "enlarge" one's own mind by comparing our judgement with the possible judgements of others. While thinking remains a solitary activity, it does not cut itself off from all others.The essays in this book address the philosophical and moral questions raised by Arendt's attempt to draw out the political implications of "critical thinking" in Kant's sense. In one way or another, they all address the place of judgment in Arendt's thought. Arendt's turn to Kant and The Critique of Judgment was motivated by her desire to find a form of philosophizing that was not hostile to politics and the public realm. But did she really think that Kant's characterization of the judging spectator pointed the way out of the opposition between the universal and the particular, between looking at things sub specie aeternitatis and looking at things from a political point of view? To what extent did she think that Kant was successful in revealing a mode of thought oriented towards public persuasion, yet one which retained its critical independence?Each of the essays wrestles with the complexities of a complex thinker. They remind us that critical thinking or Selbstdenken is among the most difficult and rare arts, even though it is an art potentially accessible to everyone. They also remind us that Hannah Arendt was a virtuoso of this art, and of how her example points the way toward a renewal of judgment as the political faculty par excellence.

Reconsidering the Role of Empathy in Hannah Arendt's Concept of Enlarged Mentality

Reconsidering the Role of Empathy in Hannah Arendt's Concept of Enlarged Mentality PDF Author: John Martin Capstick
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Empathy
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description


A Political Theory of Identity in European Integration

A Political Theory of Identity in European Integration PDF Author: Catherine Guisan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136599118
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This book provides a theoretical and historical examination of the speech and deeds of European founders. Using a fresh and innovative approach, this monograph connects political theory with concrete political practices based on empirical evidence, and theorizes the internal process of European reconciliations as it has been experienced by those involved. The book draws upon over 100 interviews, memoirs, autobiographies and essays of elite and grassroot actors across the history of the European Union, from the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950-2 to the 2010 financial crisis. It introduces the reader to major contemporary Western political thinkers, Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur, and examines how their theories develop the interpretation of political phenomena such as European integration. As one of the first studies of EU memories, this approach opens a unique window of analysis to view the development of the European community, and makes a fascinating contribution to our understanding of the political tradition born of 60 years of European integration. A Political Theory of Identity in European Integration: Memory and Policies will be of strong interest to students and scholars of European politics, contemporary democratic theory and EU studies.

Allowing the World to Resist

Allowing the World to Resist PDF Author: Stephen Ronald Acreman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Contemporary democratic theory focuses primarily on questions of intersubjective and intergroup negotiation, participation and deliberation. The politics of environmental and technoscientific issues are increasingly revealing the limitations of this intersubjective focus. Attention to the fairness of democratic procedure, or to the norms of deliberation, is necessary but insufficient when the 'facts of the matter' play such a central role in political judgement and debate. The limiting emphasis on intersubjectivity exists despite the marked influence of Hannah Arendt, for whom legitimate political judgements arise from the perspective of the world, not from subjective attitudes towards it. This thesis argues that Arendt fruitfully focuses on what she called the 'enlarged mentality' as ensuring the representativeness of political judgements, and the thesis further contends that the concept of 'enlarged mentality' has been incorrectly adopted by subsequent political theorists as a subject-oriented rather than an object-oriented principle. Enlarging the mind requires exposure to, and acceptance of, multiple object-oriented stories in which a thing or event in the world is revealed from a mediated and situated viewpoint. The novelty of every occurrence, as revealed in this particular type of storytelling, has the potential to break through various forms of intersubjective anaesthesia or habituation toward the world so that it can be accepted and judged as it is. Even when read as an object-oriented principle, however, Arendt's enlarged mentality is still limited in its capacity to approximate the perspective of the world because of her anti-modern tendencies. Taking up pragmatistic, postphenomenological and postconstructivist insights, it is clear that politically-relevant stories are told by everything and about everything, inclusive of technoscientific domains. The thesis proposes that the 'facts of the matter' can be restored, in democratic theory and practice, through a postconstructivist reformulation of the enlarged mentality, in which democratic judgement is responsive to multiply situated and mediated stories that can detect and consider the resistance of the world to the preconceived desires of the privileged.

Arendt and Adorno

Arendt and Adorno PDF Author: Lars Rensmann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804782571
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Hannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno, two of the most influential political philosophers and theorists of the twentieth century, were contemporaries with similar interests, backgrounds, and a shared experience of exile. Yet until now, no book has brought them together. In this first comparative study of their work, leading scholars discuss divergences, disclose surprising affinities, and find common ground between the two thinkers. This pioneering work recovers the relevance of Arendt and Adorno for contemporary political theory and philosophy and lays the foundation for a critical understanding of political modernity: from universalistic claims for political freedom to the abyss of genocidal politics.

The Theater of Politics

The Theater of Politics PDF Author: Eric B. Gorham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
For Hannah Arendt, creating a durable, civil public world was of utmost importance. Though many have discussed Arendt's relevance to the contemporary work of politics, Eric Gorham is the first to examine her ideas of the 'space of appearance' in the context of the university classroom. In The Theater of Politics, Gorham examines in detail Arendt's dramaturgical theory of politics and her method of political criticism and maintains that politics can be observed in the classroom, in which students are future political actors and spectators in training. Using Arendt as a theoretical platform, Gorham offers innovative ideas for politicizing the classroom and for reconceptualizing faculty and student community service: If professors and administrators can imagine their tasks in light of lessons learned from classical theater, then students will benefit from a renewed emphasis on teaching. Gorham moves to redraw the basis of political citizenship, criticizing arguments offered by civic republican and communitarian theorists and crafting a richer, more judicious concept of citizenship--one that can be learned and practiced in the political science classroom in particular and in the university in general.

Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy

Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy PDF Author: Hannah Arendt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022623178X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Hannah Arendt's last philosophical work was an intended three-part project entitled The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately, Arendt lived to complete only the first two parts, Thinking and Willing. Of the third, Judging, only the title page, with epigraphs from Cato and Goethe, was found after her death. As the titles suggest, Arendt conceived of her work as roughly parallel to the three Critiques of Immanuel Kant. In fact, while she began work on The Life of the Mind, Arendt lectured on "Kant's Political Philosophy," using the Critique of Judgment as her main text. The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.

Hannah Arendt's Theory of Political Action

Hannah Arendt's Theory of Political Action PDF Author: Trevor Tchir
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319534386
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book presents an account of Hannah Arendt’s performative and non-sovereign theory of freedom and political action, with special focus on action’s disclosure of the unique ‘who’ of each agent. It aims to illuminate Arendt’s critique of sovereign rule, totalitarianism, and world-alienation, her defense of a distinct political sphere for engaged citizen action and judgment, her conception of the ‘right to have rights,’ and her rejection of teleological philosophies of history. Arendt proposes that in modern, pluralistic, secular public spheres, no one metaphysical or religious idea can authoritatively validate political actions or opinions absolutely. At the same time, she sees action and thinking as revealing an inescapable existential illusion of a divine element in human beings, a notion represented well by the ‘daimon’ metaphor that appears in Arendt’s own work and in key works by Plato, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Kant, with which she engages. While providing a post-metaphysical theory of action and judgment, Arendt performs the fact that many of the legitimating concepts of contemporary secular politics retain a residual vocabulary of transcendence. This book will be of interest not only to Arendt scholars, but also to students of identity politics, the critique of sovereignty, international political theory, political theology, and the philosophy of history.