I argue that educators, by introducing young people to various ways of responding to wrongdoing, help prepare them for the task of acting in and taking responsibility for the world. I begin by (a) introducing Hannah Arendt's understanding of the world, the characteristics of action as unpredictable, boundless and irreversible, i.e. the frailty of…

The role of exemplification and exemplars is receiving increasing attention in educational theory. Usually, this is connected to emulation models in character and moral education. Exemplars in this framework are those who show us how to act and what to do, and inspire us emotionally to improve. In Hannah Arendt's unfinished work on judgement, the…

Crisis occupies an ambiguous place in the writings of Hannah Arendt. Not only does crisis undermine categories of judgment, but in doing so it eliminates prejudices as well, forcing us to judge without them. Although Arendt never had an opportunity to fully develop her understanding of judgment, we know that she considered it to be 'the most…

In this paper, I try to argue why it is worth turning to Hannah Arendt when reflecting on education. I am exploring her political theory in "The Human Condition" which, with the anthropologic category of natality, seems to offer an interesting approach for democratic education. Apparently everyone can participate in politics or even…

Our western conceptions of knowledge still do not seem to have fully realised what Descartes had already stated in the seventeenth century, that we can no longer acquire full certainty. In education, knowledge is very often connected to that which we possess--what we know for certain. In this paper, my starting point is the argument put forward by…

In this essay, I examine the concept of thinking in Hannah Arendt's writings. Arendt's interest in the experience of thinking allowed her to develop a concept of thinking that is distinct from other forms of mental activity such as cognition and problem solving. For her, thinking is an unending, unpredictable and destructive activity without fixed…

Informed by the critical humanisms of Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon, and Paul Gilroy, the authors argue for an orientation to teaching and learning that troubles the continuing effects of dehumanizing race logic. Reflecting on Paul Haggis's Oscar award winning film "Crash" from 2004, they suggest that the metaphor of racial "crashing" captures what…

A cosmopolitan ethic invites both an appreciation of the rich diversity of values, traditions and ways of life "and" a commitment to broad, universal principles of human rights that can secure the flourishing of that diversity. Despite the tension between universalism and particularism inherent in this outlook, it has received much…