Big Ideas

What would Hannah Arendt make of our tumultuous present?

11.06.2023 - By ABC listenPlay

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While it was Mao Zedong who believed power came from the barrel of a gun, philosopher Hannah Arendt saw it differently. Instead, she believed the eruption of violence was less a testament to power, but rather, a stark admission of its absence. These thoughts later culminated in her 1970 essay, On Violence. More than a half century later, can Arendt's insights make sense of our turbulent present?

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