Description
Book SynopsisThe drama of totalitarianism, one of the most important turns in the modern philosophy and history of the West undergirds the intellectual relationship between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. The rise of totalitarianism caused the disruption of traditional metaphysical and political categories and the necessity of a painstaking forging of new languages for the description of reality.This book argues that Arendt's answer to Heidegger's philosophy, intelligible only within the wider context of both thinkers' struggles with the philosophical tradition of the West, also opens up a new horizon of conceptualizing the relationship between philosophy and education. Arendt''s answer is a development of her thesis of the broken thread of tradition, situated in the wider context of Heideggerian philosophy and his entanglement with Nazism that questions the traditional relationship between philosophy and education. The final parts of this book return to the problem of dialogue between philosop
Trade ReviewA highly informative and innovative journey through complex relations between philosophy and politics, where the density of philosophical argument is interwoven with accounts on the difficult relations between Arendt and Heidegger: two eminent thinkers who took dramatically different positions against the most tragic challenge of the twentieth century. Against this background, Paulina Sosnowska traces the transformations of the “pedagogical promise” of philosophy, from that of freedom in ancient paideia, through individuality in modern Bildung, to autonomy in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Hannah Arendt, as “being faithful and unfaithful” to Heidegger, initiates a new version of that promise. Convincingly interpreted as foretelling Foucault’s and Agamben’s critique of biopolitics, she calls for critique and thinking as disruptive to metaphysical and political totality. Weak as it appears to be, “thinking has an immanent educational and ethical power, even if it does not have an immediate impact on social reality” – a message that must be read as significant in the time when temptations to totalitarianism re-emerge globally. -- Tomasz Szkudlarek, University of Gdansk
Table of ContentsPreface & Acknowledgments Part I: Philosophical Tradition and Education Chapter 1: The Paideia of Plato’s Cave Chapter 2: The German Idea of Bildung Chapter 3: Authenticity –The Pedagogical Promise of Heidegger Part II: Philosophy and Education at a Crossroads Chapter 4: The Broken Thread of Tradition and Heidegger’s Breaks Chapter 5: Reading Aristotle Chapter 6: Freedom and The World Part III: The Pedagogical Promise of Philosophy Chapter 7: “The Educational Principle”: the Human Condition and the Power of Precedence Chapter 8: The Promise of Thinking Afterword
