Preface
I The
Art of Thinking
II Judgment and
Culture
III Culture and
Curation
IV The World-Observer
V Politics and
Philosophy, or Restoring a Common World
VI An as Yet Undetermined
Animal
Acknowledgments
Index
D. N. Rodowick is the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in the College and the Division of Humanities at the University of Chicago. Among his books are Philosophy’s Artful Conversation, Elegy for Theory, and What Philosophy Wants from Images, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
"In An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities,
D.N. Rodowick draws on Hannah Arendt’s writings on judgment to make
the case for a philosophy of the humanities grounded in
self-reflection and interpersonal exchange. This innovative and
plausible thesis of an education in judgment as the unifying
element of the humanities will likely trigger fruitful debate."
*LSE Review of Books*
“Arendt’s reflections on judgment, thinking, moral action, and
political courage show that she was not a system builder and was
not interested in offering axioms by which to rearrange the world.
Yet in following her train of thought, we experience the
illuminating force of her insights.”
*New York Review of Books*
“A fresh look at Arendt’s philosophy on thinking and judgment
[applied] to the current ‘crisis’ in the humanities.”
*Choice*
“The question of the value of education and research in the
humanities is a perennial topic of academic debate . . . Few
thinkers have done more to bring clarity to these debates than
[Rodowick]."
*The Review of Politics*
"Convincing and illuminating. [Rodowick's] defense of the political
importance of an education in the humanities is a beautifully
written and insightful attestation to the lasting political
relevance and remarkable fecundity of Hannah Arendt’s legacy."
*Theory and Research in Education*
"Rodowick seeks to show that Arendt’s analysis of judgment is not
only a highly original but also a plausible reading of Kant, which
goes against the dominant view in scholarship that Arendt committed
quite a radical interpretative violence on Kant’s writings. This is
not simply a question about the 'correct' interpretation of
Kant but about the connections between thinking, which is an
activity done in solitude and is essentially a dialogue of the
'two-in-one' within the self; judgment, which involves 'visiting'
in our imagination the standpoints from which others see the world;
and deliberation and action in the public sphere, which is done
with others. . . . What emerges from this reading is a broader
project Arendt was engaged with: the attempt to offer an
alternative potential relationship between philosophy and
politics."
*German Studies Review*
“In this elegantly crafted book, Rodowick offers a powerful defense
of humanistic education. These pages resound both with Rodowick’s
own voice and with the voice of his constant interlocutor, Hannah
Arendt, as he works out, in spirited agreement and thoughtful
disagreement with her, a philosophically rich account (which is
also a model) of the conversations on which the human faculty of
judgment depends.”
*Patchen Markell, Cornell University*
“An Education in Judgment is a challenging and substantial
contribution to Arendt scholarship and a major new work of critical
self-reflection on the humanities by one of the field’s leading
proponents. Rodowick offers an illuminating reexamination of a
cluster of texts written in the last decade of Arendt’s life,
illustrating their interconnectedness, probing their difficulties,
and arguing for their compelling contemporary relevance.”
*Thomas Bartscherer, Bard College*
“For readers familiar with now longstanding laments about the
‘crisis of the humanities’, An Education in Judgment is a breath of
fresh air. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's evocative writings on
aesthetics and politics, Rodowick brilliantly charts a new way
forward on well-travelled terrain. The fate of the humanities lies
not in shoring up what is left of the canon but in developing
wholly quotidian practices of critical thinking and judging. Rooted
in the ordinary capacities of all citizens, the humanities become a
world-building activity that takes account of plurality and
different perspectives on a common world. Recognizing with Arendt
the crucial importance of publicity, this book breaks free of
narrow academic debates and offers a public vision of the
humanities as an imaginative space for creating a new genre of the
human, not as telos but as open-ended future.”
*Linda M. G. Zerilli, University of Chicago*
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