VRG: The Origins of Totalitarianism Ep.#6, Chapters 6 & 7

Introduction by Director Roger Berkowitz for the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College Ch. 6-7

WHO IS HANNAH ARENDT?
Hannah Arendt was a humanist thinker who thought boldly and provocatively about our shared political and ethical world. Inspired by philosophy, she warned against the political dangers of philosophy to abstract and obfuscate the plurality and reality of our shared world. She fiercely defended the importance of the public sphere, but she was also intensely private and defended the importance of privacy and solitude as prerequisites for a life in public. Embraced by liberals and conservatives, she also enraged and engaged interlocutors from all political persuasions.

WHAT IS THE VIRTUAL READING GROUP?
The Virtual Reading Group is an online, scholarly, collaborative exploration of the works of Hannah Arendt. During the coronavirus pandemic, the VRG, as we call it, has grown with new members from around the world. We gather to talk and to listen while closely reading texts on issues like totalitarianism, democracy, privacy, extremism, and the importance of public spaces for debate and resolution.

The VRG is hosted by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, the world's most expansive home for bold and risky humanities thinking about our political world inspired by the spirit of Hannah Arendt, the leading thinker of politics and active citizenship in the modern era.

HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE?
Members of the Hannah Arendt Center and Bard College students are invited to join us for the Virtual Reading Group, held regularly online and led by Director Roger Berkowitz and Assistant Director Samantha Hill.

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[jesshill]

Thanks so much for this series, it’s really helping me digest the dense, incredible material in this book

[stein]

I'm loving this series! Just finished reading her book, but it feels like it all went in one ear and out the other, so to speak.

[jeannejanicki]

I wish we could be friends in order to enjoy the conversation personally. I love your enthusiasm for Arendt. Thank you!

[Zing_art]

The sense of entitlement of bureaucracy and its very foundation being anti democratic. Interesting insight. However would have loved a deliberation upon TE Lawrence

[richardpage]

In this context how does one explain all the examples of non-western, non-white, racism and imperialism ala Japan in wwii, Iran throughout the Persian empire and with pretensions today, the ancient Egyptians, Assyria, etc who were extreme imperialists, the Thai towards the Khmer and Lao, Myanmar towards all its minorities, the Taliban or the Chinese continuously from the time of the Qin, or historical native American imperialism from the Aztecs among so many others? What I see is an extreme limitation in our understanding of the breadth of imperialist racial pretensions that arise whenever power is concentrated in one ethno-lingustic group against the margins of their differing neighbors and would be very interested in your views on this through her lens.