Speaker Series 2025 January 24th

The Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation & Rhetoric along with the PhD in Argumentation Studies at the University of Windsor invite you to a talk by

Dr. Greg Feldman, Argumentation Studies Faculty

“Politics without compulsion: Hannah Arendt on thinking and action”

ABSTRACT: Hannah Arendt developed distinct views on the life of action and the life of the mind. The life of action, or the “vita activa”, focuses on the subject’s external relations with the world, while the life of the mind focuses on the subject’s internal composition. The vita activa is composed of the activities of labor, work, and action. The mind is composed of the faculties of thinking, willing, and judging. Arendt did not fully synthesize these two aspects of our being, but it is clear in her work that together they enable political subjects to reconstitute themselves while they reconstitute the shared space between them. Therefore, they enable us to inaugurate new directions in history. This presentation fills out the Arendtian view of politics by showing how thinking and acting depend upon each other despite being mutually exclusive activities. Understanding their relationship, allows us to conceptualize a sovereign politics that emerges from the ground up through direct action among relational subjects, rather than top-down from state imposition upon atomized subjects.

 

January 24, 2025

3:00 p.m.

Chrysler Hall North, 1163

All Welcome