Reviews for The Routledge reader in politics and performance

The average rating for The Routledge reader in politics and performance based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-14 00:00:00 Mark Myers The Promise of Politics is an interesting collection of Arendt's writings on what politics could be and what undermines it. It could perhaps be the dream of politics - linking the idea of political discourse to Ancient Athens and the Roman Republic - and it would be easy to scoff at this as a kind of romanticism. But in fact what Arendt is exploring is the way in which Western thought has constantly failed to respect the possibility of political action and discourse as a genuine good. This failure - which she links to the death of Socrates and the development of Platonic and Aristotelian thought - leads to the craziness by which wish upon ourselves the death of politics. For Arendt this disdain for the political reality of needing to find mutual accommodation and respect for one another is the connection between Totalitarianism, Revolutionary Millenarianism and Consumerism. One great line: Revolution is the opium of the people.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-19 00:00:00 Christoph Poehl This collection of essays tries to bridge the gap between political philosophy and political practice. I found the first and the last essays thrilling; Hannah Arendt traces the trajectory of the ideas of freedom, academics, and philosophy to show how the ideas have changed through time and how modern philosophy and politics have reached an intellectual detente, a pact of non-aggression with clearly delineated borders, where the ivory tower won't delve into practical politics and political practice won't wrestle with big questions. Arendt believes this barrier needs to be breached for the good of both practical politics and robust philosophy.