Vorträge und Lesungen
A Crisis of Common Sense
- Wann
- Mo, 12. Januar 2026, 18:15 Uhr
- Wo oder WAS
-
Freiburg
Universität, KG I, Hörsaal 1199
Prof. Jennifer Culbert
(Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore):
A Crisis of Common Sense: Revaluing the Right to Define Our Own Worlds of Meaning
Veranstaltung in englischer Sprache
In «What is Authority?» (1954), Hannah Arendt famously suggests that in discussions among political and social scientists there is «a silent agreement» that «we can ignore distinctions and proceed on the assumption that everything can eventually be called anything else, and that distinctions are meaningful only to the extent that each of us has the right 'to define his terms.'» Under such circumstances, she claims, if «we assure ourselves we still understand each other, we do not mean that together we understand a world in common to us all, but that we understand the consistency of arguing and reasoning.» In brief, while we silently agree on something, what we agree on is not an understanding of the world in which we find ourselves individually but on a right to occupy «our own worlds of meaning.» In this lecture, I focus on the assumption of such a right. I argue that this right is conflated with «the right to have rights,» a conflation that Arendt herself invites in her comments in The Origins of Totalitarianism on a right to belong to some kind of organized community. In order to elaborate further on Arendt's own suggestion in «What is Authority?» that only now with the loss of tradition and the cutting of the ties that bind us to these communities «will the past open up to us with unexpected freshness and tell us things no one has yet had ears to hear,» the lecture concludes by interrogating Arendt's view of rights, complicating Arendt's claims about community, and emphasizing the way in which words resist the efforts of men to define them for themselves. (Text: Jennifer Culbert)
Veranstaltung in der Reihe "Gemeinsinn in der Krise - Politik zwischen politischem Urteilen und Populismus" des Colloquium politicum der Universität Freiburg.
In Zusammenarbeit mit PD Dr. Martin Baesler, unterstützend begleitet von Prof. em. Dr. Gisela Riescher, Professur für Politische Philosophie, Theorie und Ideengeschichte am Seminar für Wissenschaftliche Politik.
Mehr Informationen unter: https://www.studiumgenerale.uni-freiburg.de/cp/reihen Quelle: Veranstalter
(Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore):
A Crisis of Common Sense: Revaluing the Right to Define Our Own Worlds of Meaning
Veranstaltung in englischer Sprache
In «What is Authority?» (1954), Hannah Arendt famously suggests that in discussions among political and social scientists there is «a silent agreement» that «we can ignore distinctions and proceed on the assumption that everything can eventually be called anything else, and that distinctions are meaningful only to the extent that each of us has the right 'to define his terms.'» Under such circumstances, she claims, if «we assure ourselves we still understand each other, we do not mean that together we understand a world in common to us all, but that we understand the consistency of arguing and reasoning.» In brief, while we silently agree on something, what we agree on is not an understanding of the world in which we find ourselves individually but on a right to occupy «our own worlds of meaning.» In this lecture, I focus on the assumption of such a right. I argue that this right is conflated with «the right to have rights,» a conflation that Arendt herself invites in her comments in The Origins of Totalitarianism on a right to belong to some kind of organized community. In order to elaborate further on Arendt's own suggestion in «What is Authority?» that only now with the loss of tradition and the cutting of the ties that bind us to these communities «will the past open up to us with unexpected freshness and tell us things no one has yet had ears to hear,» the lecture concludes by interrogating Arendt's view of rights, complicating Arendt's claims about community, and emphasizing the way in which words resist the efforts of men to define them for themselves. (Text: Jennifer Culbert)
Veranstaltung in der Reihe "Gemeinsinn in der Krise - Politik zwischen politischem Urteilen und Populismus" des Colloquium politicum der Universität Freiburg.
In Zusammenarbeit mit PD Dr. Martin Baesler, unterstützend begleitet von Prof. em. Dr. Gisela Riescher, Professur für Politische Philosophie, Theorie und Ideengeschichte am Seminar für Wissenschaftliche Politik.
Mehr Informationen unter: https://www.studiumgenerale.uni-freiburg.de/cp/reihen Quelle: Veranstalter
Veröffentlicht am Di, 28. Oktober 2025 um 14:35 Uhr
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