Hannah Arendt Humanities Network

Revisiting Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition and Vita Activa

The OSUN Hannah Arendt Humanities Network will hold its second Annual Text Seminar at the Wick Hotel in Hudson, NY on June 6th-10th, 2022. The week-long seminar convenes scholars from OSUN institutions to lead a close reading of a classic work of political or democratic thinking. This year we welcome up to 6 OSUN students and 6 OSUN faculty/scholars to take part in a unique relational bilingual reading of The Human Condition and Vita activa.

Reading knowledge of German is required. Discussions will be in English. 
Flights, accommodations, local travel, and meals will be covered by HAHN.

This year’s seminar revisits Hannah Arendt’s pivotal work The Human Condition (1958), alongside the German version, Vita activa. Oder vom tätigen Leben (1960). There are key differences between the two versions, including new arrangements of ideas, changes in emphasis and quotations, and new allusions to philosophical and literary traditions. The books are exemplary of Arendt’s postwar writing practice, in which she prepared different versions of her writing for German and English-speaking audiences.

Each scholar participant will choose a selection from each book, ranging from a paragraph to several pages, and then present them and their relation to one another to the group. This will serve as an invitation to open discussion, where students will have the opportunity to engage in each session with OSUN scholars.

The co-hosts of the seminar will be Professors Patchen Markell (Cornell University) and Thomas Wild (Bard College, NY) who are preparing a bilingual critical edition of both books as part of the Critical Edition of the Complete Works (Kritische Gesamtausgabe) of Hannah Arendt.

Application deadline is February 28, 2022

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