Unlearning with Hannah Arendt by Marie Luise Knott

Author:Marie Luise Knott [Knott, Marie Luise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-648-5
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2014-05-12T16:00:00+00:00

Translated into the political realm, what is needed is mutual agreement to that change of mind; people must be willing to change their minds so they can be “trusted” to begin something new. And they need a reliable place where this can occur. A constitution and laws are, for Arendt, the guarantors of that place.

Arendt’s new political conceptions of forgiveness and promise are from now on carried by the idea, further developed in On Revolution (1963), that nations or republics (which in everyday life are fragmented conglomerations of the poor, the rich, the sick, the depressed, the unemployed, bureaucrats, actors, and florists), through the declaration of will embodied in their founding act (and based on these notions of promise and forgiveness), can develop the power to bring foreign or even formerly inimical peoples into “participation with each other.”

Yet forgiveness remains an act that cannot be decreed. The supplicant has no means of demanding pardon and must at every moment be prepared for the possibility of failure. His only, fragile hope lies in the feeling that our shared humanity is stronger than the deed that divides us. Freedom is a “great power” that cannot be had without the danger of failure, since the person who asks forgiveness knows that it is possible that he will remain unforgiven. The possible encounter with not being forgiven and the knowledge of the existence of the unforgivable are inherent in the concrete plea for forgiveness. Moreover, forgiveness is not an act of the will, no matter how logical forgiving someone seems and no matter how earnest the resolve to forgive. There is always something that remains. You cannot depend on logic or a decision to forgive. There is more at play, an interpersonal remainder. Forgiveness is hostile to the supremacy of reason. Small wonder that in the course of the Enlightenment, it was delegated to Christianity.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.