Between Past and Future (Penguin Classics)
by Hannah Arendt, Jerome Kohn
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hannah Arendt, Jerome KohnEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-26
ISBN: 0143104810
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of Between Past and Future (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Usable for lower and upper division philosophy and education courses
Summary: 5 Stars
I have used both this book and _The Human Condition_ in both lower and upper-division philosophy courses. This book has the benefit of compressing Arendt's insights (especially insights into natality, power, and forgiveness) into a much more accessible prose than _The Human Condition_. I would therefore prefer to assign this selection of her work in most classes, especially classes in which one's guiding theme is the philosophy of education or the notion of a participatory democracy.
What I find most interesting in _Between Past and Future_ is the way that Arendt's individual sections on Authority, Freedom, and Education work together. Arendt's critique of authority and tradition--she claims both have ended with totalitarianism, at least in the political realm--is powerful. Her insistence that authority and tradition remain within the home and within education, however, must be read, understood, appreciated and criticized.
Basically, Arendt ties educational authority to a consciously accepted responsibility for the whole world, for the whole institution that one bears within one's stance as educator.
This is a difficult stance for most teachers to take--particularly those of us who teach regularly in college-level service courses. We can feel the stirrings of resentment, and we can sometimes wish to have our say and go home, without a further thought. However, Arendt's position is clear and demands a response: in order to become a full-fledged citizen of a democracy, it is absolutely necessary for students to have had the chance to see teachers and professors as authorities who bear this global responsibility, who teach as if democracy depended on them.
I might interpret her position thus: A college teacher who teaches as if research alone were success in her field is commiting herself (in the future) to something akin to tyranny. A high school or grade school teacher who leaves the children to their own devices, who substitutes doing for learning, who believes pedagogy is a method divorced from the content that is to be taught, encourages children to grow like weeds, without a view of the whole and without a clear sense of having had sufficient room made for their voices, insights, and participation.
I believe (and hope) that for Arendt to teach is not to pour content into heads. It is not to lob books from the outside into the mob. It is to acknowledge the difficulty and multiplicity of interpretations of history, literature, philosophy, etc.--so that one day those sitting before the teacher in the classroom can develop and reinterpret the past in unforeseen ways. Teaching is leaving open the possibility for greater integration, for greater humanity.
Summary of Between Past and Future (Penguin Classics)
Arendt describes the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill once more the vital essence of these concepts.
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