Hannah Arendt: Natality as Ethical Education

Petra Brown (Deakin University )

In recent years, higher education across the globe has been increasingly marketized, accompanied by a technocratic approach that views education as a utilitarian tool in service of economic ends. Rationalization and standardization are prioritized over individual discipline traditions, particularly in the arts and humanities where character-formation and developing subjectivity are considered key aspects of education. As a result, key skills and qualities that enable civic and democratic life are effaced. This paper addresses the contemporary crisis of education through the work of Hannah Arendt, and her critique of education in the context of her phenomenological account of subjectivity in modernity, particularly through her concepts of action and natality, and her description of the changing social and relational structure of modernity. It critically examines Arendt’s vision of education in the context of the organization of human life, particularly as she relates it to political freedom, and outlines some examples of how Arendt might be applied to the challenges that face the contemporary university.
               
Bio:

Petra Brown is an academic at Deakin University, Australia. Her research expertise is in religion and ethics, political theology, German mid-20th century philosophy, Carl Schmitt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Soren Kierkegaard. New research interests include reading the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt through a feminist perspective, in particular Arendt’s critique of sovereignty and violence, and her vision of a political community that is grounded on the idea of ‘natality’ as the founding basis for human relationships. ([email protected])