Arendt and Heidegger : : The Fate of the Political / / Dana Villa.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Villa, Dana,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [1995]; ©1996
• Year of Publication: 1995
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.)

Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers (including critical theorists, communitarians, and participatory democrats) who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean theme of a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics. Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God (i.e., the collapse of objective correlates to our ideals, ends, and purposes). After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- A NOTE TO THE READER -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- INTRODUCTION: The Problem of Action in Arendt -- PART I: Arendt's Theory of Political Action -- CHAPTER 1. Arendt, Aristotle, and Action -- CHAPTER 2. Thinking Action against the Tradition -- CHAPTER 3. Arendt, Nietzsche, and the "Aestheticization" of Political Action -- PART II: Arendt and Heidegger -- CHAPTER 4. The Heideggerian Roots of Arendt's Political Theory -- CHAPTER 5. Groundless Action, Groundless Judgment: Politics after Metaphysics -- CHAPTER 6. The Critique of Modernity -- PART III: The Critique of Heidegger's Philosophical Politics -- CHAPTER 7. Arendt, Heidegger, and the Oblivion of Praxis -- CHAPTER 8. Heidegger, Poixsis, and Politics -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX