The Arendtian mode

Abstract

Steve Buckler's Hannah Arendt and Political Theory: Challenging the Tradition targets the readers of Arendt who treat her utterances as sacrosanct, all while digging deep to discover-and ultimately justify-the source of her persistent allure. In his synoptic examination of the method underlying Arendt's mature theory, including The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and On Revolution, Buckler is clear about the limits of relying on Arendt for comprehending contemporary dilemmas. Buckler writes:We can make extrapolations from Arendt's theoretical orientation and from its substantiation in terms of what she had to say about contemporary events and issues and draw conclusions as to how her thinking might apply to events and issues that we face now. At the same time, we need to be aware of the danger of reifying Arendt's work, of treating it as pseudo-theological text and scouring it for answers (169).

Experimentation and the future(s) of political hope

“… 5. Representative examples are Dienstag (2006), Strong (2012) and Marasco (2015). There is a small but growing literature on hope that runs counter to this tendency; see, for example, Blöser et al (2020), Goldman (2012, 2023), Huber (2021), Lacelle-Webster (2023), Mittleman (2009), Moellendorf (2022), Stahl (2019), Stockdale (2021), Thaler (2018), and Thaler (2019). …”

“… 22. In this regard, political hope entails miracles in Arendt’s secularized sense of collaborative action that disrupts the predictable, ‘natural’ historical trajectories; see Lacelle-Webster (2023) and Goldman (forthcoming). …”