Occasional Evenings: The Rules of the Game

Join us Sunday, February 16th, for a screening and discussion of Jean Renoir’s classic comedy of manners The Rules of the Game (or, La règle du jeu). Filmed on the eve of World War II, The Rules of the Game depicts a high society in twilight—obtuse, egotistical, decadent. Before the film, BISR faculty Samantha Hill and Rebecca Ariel Porte will discuss its making, themes, context, and hysterical reception. Beer, wine, seltzer, and snacks will be served. Attendance is free (with $8 suggested donation). Please RSVP below.

Event Schedule

Sunday, 6:30-9:30pm
February 16, 2020

https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/events/occasional-evenings-the-rules-of-the-game/

Grimm Lecture 2020

THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2020 — 7:00 PM EDT

Thinking Itself is Dangerous: Reading Hannah Arendt Now

What can Hannah Arendt’s life and work teach us about our present political moment? Arendt scholar Samantha Rose Hill will talk about the renewed interest in Hannah Arendt’s work, and why we should be reading Arendt now to better understand the politics of today. 
 
In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, and the rise of illiberalism world-wide, many have turned to the work of Hannah Arendt, a twentieth-century German Jewish political thinker, to understand our contemporary political moment. Since 2016, Arendt’s 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism has been selling at record numbers. Nearly 600 pages long, Origins distils the various elements of totalitarianism, like the collapse between truth and fiction, the breakdown of the rule of law, the privatization of public goods, the decline of the nation-state, the rise of mass homelessness, rootlessness, loneliness, and the need for solitude. 

How can Arendt’s work in Origins and one of her other masterpieces, The Human Condition from 1958, help us understand our contemporary political moment? How have our political conditions changed in the 21st century? How has digital media technology transformed social relations? Is it possible to stop and think about what we are doing today? Hannah Arendt’s work is not a roadmap into the future, but it can help us orient ourselves to the present political crises and, perhaps in the process, teach us to love the world. 

This event is presented in cooperation with the departments of Philosophy and Germanic & Slavic Studies at the University of Waterloo, and the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-german-studies/events/grimm-lecture-2020

February 14, 2020: On Reconciliation: A reading of letters between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

Please join us for a performance of Dora García’s On Reconciliation, a public reading of letters exchanged by German philosophers Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Arendt and Heidegger’s fifty year correspondence covered the rise of Fascism, the Second World War, and some of the most significant philosophical developments of the 20th century. The letters written by  Arendt, a German Jew who fled Europe to escape the Holocaust, and Heidegger, a member of the Nazi party, illuminates their complicated relationship and loyalty to one another, framing reconciliation as a political position.

On Reconciliation encourages debate around the question of ethics and artistic production. Following an introduction by artist Dora García and Senior Curator-at-Large Ruth Estevez, the selected letters will be read by Samantha Hill, Acting Director at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, and Rajesh Sampath, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Justice, Rights, and Social Change at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. A conversation will follow.

This event is presented in conjunction with Dora García: Love with Obstacles.

Free + open to the public

https://www.brandeis.edu/rose/programs/2020/on-reconciliation.html

Forthcoming Book: Hannah Arendt

“What is the subject of our thought? Experience! Nothing else!” Hannah Arendt exclaimed in 1972 at a conference on “The Work of Hannah Arendt,” which had been organized by the Toronto Society for the Study of Social and Political Thought. Arendt was invited to attend the conference as a guest of honor, and insisted on participating instead.

For Arendt all thinking moves from experience, and the experiences of her life as a German Jewish émigré in the 20th century shaped her political and philosophical thought. Raised in a well-established secular family, arrested by the Gestapo in Berlin, interned in Gurs in the South of France, stateless for twenty years, Arendt’s work moves from the material conditions of the historical moment she lived in. Weaving together archival documents, correspondence, lecture notes, diaries, and journal entries this manuscript will offer a portrait of Hannah Arendt’s life, while tracing the key ideas in her political and philosophical writing. From Arendt’s early education in German philosophy and affair with Martin Heidegger, through her turn toward politics and forced emigration to France, to her life in New York and reportage on the trial of Adolph Eichmann, this biography will introduce readers to the life and work of Hannah Arendt.

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What kind of people might become ‘extremists’?

“In one of the most accessible pieces in this special issue of SAQ, Samantha Rose Hill summarises the ‘various elements of authoritarianism’ covered by Adorno. She reminds us – and this argument is also Adorno’s – that ‘the intimate connection between psychology and ideology cannot be subject to a … simple reduction to terms of personality’.” Read more here.

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