This paper examines Hannah Arendt's notion of citizenship with reference to her account of loneliness in the modern age. Whereas recent scholarship has emphasized Arendt's notion of the “right to have rights” in order to advance her conception of citizenship in the context of global democratic theory, I maintain that this discourse threatens to overshadow the depth of her critical relation to the liberal tradition. By turning to loneliness, I aim to show that Arendt's understanding of citizenship guides a prescient (...) critique of the basic assumptions that underlie notions of citizenship within liberal political theory. On her view, these forms of citizenship do not secure liberty, but instead reproduce the very loneliness that has made modern individuals susceptible to totalitarian domination. With this, I argue that Arendt poses her notion of citizenship as an antidote to loneliness and, thus, to the vulnerability of modern political life to totalitarianism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs efforts towards reconciling the thought of Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno gained momentum in the last decade, it seems an array of essential discrepancies have been failing to receive due attention. This article aims to foreground and explore one particular philosophical difference which stands in the way of such endeavours, focussing on Adorno’s and Arendt’s conceptualization of nature. It is argued that while Adorno’s philosophy is poised to redeem nature from the pangs of false enlightenment, Arendt’s redefinition of political (...) existence upholds not only the careful separation of politics from nature but also emphasizes the former’s superiority. Revisiting a set of arguments raised by Adorno against fundamental ontology such as the questions of hypostasis and tautology, it is explored in what ways Arendt’s conceptualization of nature as eternal recurrence markedly and perhaps irreconcilably differs from the normative import of Adorno’s understanding, which emphasizes the concrete unity of nature with history. (shrink)

There are two dominant schools of thought addressing problems of cosmopolitanism and conflict: democratic national sovereigntism, inspired by Hegel, and global constitutionalism, inspired by Kant and reformulated by Habermas. This paper develops a third position by reading Adorno's critique of both theoretical traditions. Rather than compromising between these camps, Adorno triangulates between them. Critically illuminating their respective deficiencies in view of the changing conditions of a globalized modern world has critical implications for cosmopolitics. Although largely negative, Adorno's critique provides an (...) important framework for a contestatory reformulation of cosmopolitanism, one that is better equipped to confront societal and political global conflicts insufficiently reflected in sovereigntist and global constitutionalist models. (shrink)

The point of departure for this article is a comparative study of Adorno and Arendt on the question of evil and modernity. To be precise, I observe how Adorno and Arendt present us with very different ways of understanding radical evil as an expression of the modern project of acceleration. This divergence presents us with a problematic which does not fit easily into the framework of the contemporary post-metaphysical engagement with evil. The latter projects a relational, non-substantive concept of evil (...) addressed under the order of collective memory and against the background of a normatively neutralized order of history. Yet I show, by tracing the continuities and discontinuities which exist between Arendt and Adorno’s conceptualizing of radical evil, on the one hand, and the different elements of this contemporary engagement, on the other, how the initial problematic is symptomatic of a continuing investment in history and can only be addressed in terms of such an investment. This investment is the product of a dynamic between history and memory, informing the work of both thinkers, which partially intersects with the Hegelian strategy of theodicy. I thus conclude with a consideration of whether certain aspects of the latter should be rehabilitated. (shrink)

In this article, I develop an account of judgment that I term embodied reflective judgment, which implies that thinking and feeling are connected, entangled, and crucial for critical judgment. How we think about something can prompt an emotional response, and that response can prompt further reflection necessary for critical judgment. I clarify the relationship between thinking and feeling in judgment by foregrounding guilt feelings as a specific issue that individuals and political collectivities must deal with to make embodied reflective judgment (...) possible. I ground the concept of embodied reflective judgment in an engagement with Theodor W. Adorno and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s Jewish writings were central to her thinking about the human condition and engaged with the dialectics of modernity, universalism and identity. Her concept of the ‘conscious pariah’ attempted both to define a role for the public intellectual and understand the relationship between Jews and modernity. Controversially she accused Jewish victims of lack of resistance to the Nazis and argued that their victimization resulted from apolitical ‘worldlessness’. We argue that although Arendt’s analysis was original and challenging, her characterization of (...) Jewish history as one of ‘powerlessness’ is exaggerated but, more importantly, her underdeveloped concept of ‘the social’ is insensitive to the complex modalities of resistance and consciousness among subaltern Jewish communities. Furthermore, her lack of interest in religious observance obscures the importance of Judaism as a resource for resistance. This is illustrated by the ‘hidden transcripts’ of Jewish resistance from the early modern period. (shrink)