Interdisciplinary Arendt: Pluralism, Promise, Problems

2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Arendt’s celebrated Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen and the two semesters she spent here in 1972 and 1973. She was the first woman to contribute to this august series, established in 1888, which is concerned with practical theology. Arendt’s lectures were published as Life of the Mind in 1977 and 1978. In this final, incomplete, work before her untimely death in December 1975, Arendt traced her commitment to what she termed ‘thinking without banisters’. Viewing thinking as the link between the active life and the moment of contemplation, Arendt underscored how critical engagement was necessary to both a healthy politics and a healthy mind. In this she implored the reader to be engaged not just in the search of truth, understood as technical expertise, but the pursuit of meaning, or moral wisdom. And it is in the dialogue between the two we find her ongoing concern for pluralism.

To mark this important anniversary and to celebrate the international and interdisciplinary resonance of Arendt’s thought, the University of Aberdeen is hosting

• A Symposium on Arendt and Council Democracy (May 2022)
• A Hannah Arendt Reading Group (February – December 2023)
• An international conference Interdisciplinary Arendt: Pluralism, Promise, Problems featuring Keynote Speakers Sharon Achinstein, Ronald Beiner, Katherine Sophia Belle and Juliet Hooker (22nd-25th August 2023).