Between Past and Future

by Arendt, Hannah (2006)

Abstract

From the author of Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Origins of Totalitarianism, “a book to think with through the political impasses and cultural confusions of our day” (Harper’s Magazine) Hannah Arendt’s insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute an impassioned contribution to political philosophy. In Between Past and Future Arendt describes the perplexing crises modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill the vital essence of these concepts and use them to regain a frame of reference for the future. To participate in these exercises is to associate, in action, with one of the most original and fruitful minds of the twentieth century.

Key Passage

Perhaps the chief difference between society and mass society is that society wanted culture, evaluated and devaluated cultural things into social commodities, used and abused them for its own selfish purposes, but did not "consume" them. Even in their most worn-out shapes these things remained things and retained a certain objective character; they disintegrated until they looked like a heap of rubble, but they did not disappear. Mass society, on the contrary, wants not culture but entertainment, and the wares offered by the entertainment industry are indeed consumed by society just like any other consumer goods. The products needed for entertainment serve the life process of society, even though they may not be as necessary for this life as bread and meat. They serve, as the phrase is, to while away time, and the vacant time which is whiled away is not leisure time, strictly speaking time, that is, in which we are free from all cares and activities necessitated by the life process and therefore free for the world and its culture it is rather left overtime, which still is biological in nature, left over after labor and sleep have received their due. Vacant time which entertainment is supposed to fill is a hiatus in the biologically conditioned cycle of labor in the "metabolism of man with nature," as Marx used to say. (p.205)

Keywords

Ardent, Political Philosophy, Virtue, Responsibility, Modernity, Future, Justice

Themes

Between Past and Future [1961], Arendt Citations

Links to Reference

• https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=VZrpAgAAQBAJ
• https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VZrpAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=between+past+and+future&ots=176zhX1643&sig=87GgJF8hpY3Bg7BQe6oH3zaMq3g
• http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/uprising1313/files/2017/09/arendt_what-is-authority.pdf

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