Arendt and International Politics: Readings Across the Lines

by John Williams (Editor), A. Lang (Editor)

Overview

Hannah Arendt's approach to politics focuses on action and conduct, rather than institutions, constitutions, and states. Thus, Arendt's work offers a novel and interesting alternative to the ways in which agency and structure are understood in international relations. In light of Arendtian conceptions of politics, essays in this book challenge conventional IR theories. The contributions on agency explore concepts and categories of political action that enable individuals to act politically and to re-make the world in new, unpredictable ways. The contributions on structure explore how Arendt provides new critical purchase upon often reified structures and categories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403967831
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	08/11/2005
Series:	The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought
Edition description:	2005
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Anthony Lang Jr. is Professor of International Political Theory and directs the Centre for Global Constitutionalism at the University of St Andrews, UK. His previous books include Agency and Ethics: The Politics of Military Intervention (State University of New York Press, 2002) and Punishment, Justice and International Relations: Ethics and Order after the Cold War (Routledge, 2008). He has published articles, books and edited volumes on a range of topics in International Political Theory, Ethics and International Affairs, and International Legal Theory.

Table of Contents

Preface; A.Lang Jr . & J.Williams Introduction Hannah Arendt and International Affairs; A.Lang Jr . & J.Williams Hannah Arendt: A Biographical and Political Introduction; P.Owens Arendtian Readings of International Relations; Hannah Arendt, Publics and Violence; P.Owens Forgiveness and the Possibility of Politics in Post-Conflict Situations; A.Schaap Hannah Arendt and the "Right" to Have Rights; B.Cotter International Relations Readings of Arendt Hannah Arendt's Critical Realism: Rights, Power, and Responsibility; D.Klusmeyer Governance and Political Action: Hannah Arendt on Global Political Protest; A.Lang Jr. Hannah Arendt and the International Space In-between; J.Williams Arendt, Religion, and Cosmic War; C.Bagge Lausten Conclusions: the Arendtian Moment in International Relations?; A.Lang Jr .

Recipe

"Lots of us in the field of International Relations know something about Hannah Arendt--her inquiries into the pathologies of the 20th century, her bracing affirmation of public life, her own life as emigre and intellectual, her remarkable personal and intellectual affiliations. Yet few of us have seen the relevance of Arendt's work to our own. The great virtue of this book is to show that Arendt's construction of the world, and especially her effort to fit classical republican premises to contemporary circumstances, points up the pathologies of the field--its uncritical realism, liberal yearnings and moral myopia--in more ways than we might have imagined possible."--Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University

Editorial Reviews

"Lots of us in the field of International Relations know something about Hannah Arendt - her inquiries into the pathologies of the 20th century, her bracing affirmation of public life, her own life as emigre and intellectual, her remarkable personal and intellectual affiliations. Yet few of us have seen the relevance of Arendt's work to our own. The great virtue of this book is to show that Arendt's construction of the world, and especially her effort to fit classical republican premises to contemporary circumstances, points up the pathologies of the field - its uncritical realism, liberal yearnings and moral myopia - in more ways than we might have imagined possible." - Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University

From the Publisher