Monday, 14 July 2025, 7.30 pm, diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery
Conversation with
Samantha Fazekas | Ole Meinefeld | Maria Robaszkiewicz | Michael Weinman
– The event will take place in both German and English spoken language. –
When, in the summer of 1950, Hannah Arendt chose a remark by Karl Jaspers as the epigraph for the Preface of The Origins of Totalitarianism, she laid down a challenge: if we wish to avoid “falling prey to” (anheimfallen) either the (myths of the) past or the (false promises of the) future, we must remain fully present in our time.
This is a compelling exhortation. Yet, it offers a paradox us as gathering now – 50 years after Arendt’s death – to discuss her work. After all, if the point is not to “fall prey to” the allure of antiquarianism, why turn to a thinker whose analyses addressed the crises of her own era, now long past?
In this light we insist that we read Arendt not for what her work reveals about “then, but because her reflections – on totalitarianism; on personal responsibility under a dictatorship; on “men in dark times”; on Jews and other minorities and the question of assimilation; on natality and plurality as the primary principles of political community – illuminate our present and profoundly matter now.
Our conversations seek to model a form of engagement that reads Arendt no as a monument but as a provocation. In continuing what she called “exercises in political thinking,” we try to live up the charge “ganz gegenwärtig zu sein” – to be fully of the present.
