Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

29 February 2016

Prologue, Part I, Part II (sections 4-6)

[I have been posting my lectures for Political Philosophy. Previously we had taken up parts of Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianisms, such as the prefaces and opening chapter, “The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie,” “Race Thinking before Racism” and “Race and Bureaucracy” and“Decline of the Nation-State, End of the Rights of Man” in Part II, “Imperialism.”]

Coming back from a break without any continuity with a previous text, while also landing on the 29th of all days, a day that seems like it should never happen, you’ll excuse me for seeming to be speaking in an entirely different voice. We will, for so much in the days ahead, be speaking of the voice, its tone, and its inflections–and then how it is a mark of human action and thus always…