D. N Rodowick and Samantha Rose Hill will discuss An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities and Hannah Arendt. They will be joined in conversation by Thomas Bartscherer.

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About An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities:

In An Education in Judgment, philosopher D. N. Rodowick makes the definitive case for a philosophical humanistic education aimed at the cultivation of a life guided by both self-reflection and interpersonal exchange. Such a life is an education in judgment, the moral capacity to draw conclusions alone and with others, and in letting one’s own judgments be answerable to the potentially contrasting judgments of others. Thinking, for Rodowick, is an art we practice with and learn from each other on a daily basis.

In taking this approach, Rodowick follows the lead of Hannah Arendt, who made judgment the cornerstone of her conception of community. What is important for Rodowick, as for Arendt, is the cultivation of ‘free relations,’ in which we allow our judgments to be affected and transformed by those of others, creating ‘an ever-widening fabric of intersubjective moral consideration.’ That is a fragile fabric, certainly, but one that Rodowick argues is worth pursuing, caring for, and preserving. This original work thinks with and beyond Arendt about the importance of the humanities and what ‘the humanities’ amounts to beyond the walls of the university.

About Hannah Arendt:

In Hannah Arendt, Samantha Rose Hill weaves together new biographical detail, archival documents, poems, and correspondence to reveal a woman whose passion for the life of the mind was nourished by her love of the world. Hannah Arendt is one of the most renowned political thinkers of the twentieth century, and her work has never been more relevant than it is today. Born in Germany in 1906, Arendt published her first book at the age of twenty-three, before turning away from the world of academic philosophy to reckon with the rise of the Third Reich. After World War II, Arendt became one of the most prominent—and controversial—public intellectuals of her time, publishing influential works such as The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem.

About D. N. Rodowick:

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.

About Samantha Rose Hill:

Samantha Rose Hill is a senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and associate faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, LitHub, OpenDemocracy, Public Seminar, Contemporary Political Theory, and Theory and Event. She is the author of Hannah Arendt.

About the interlocutor:

Thomas Bartscherer is the Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard College. He is the co-editor of Switching Codes and Erotikon, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

About the series:

Produced in partnership with the University of Chicago Press, By the Book: Smart Talk with Chicago Authors brings big ideas and smart conversation directly to you. Join these book events via Zoom from the comfort of your favorite chair and engage with authors and experts on a variety of topics.

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