University of São Paulo: New edition of “Between the Past and the Future” will be launched at USP
One of the great works of political thought of the 20th century will be relaunched in Brazil this Wednesday, the 17th, at 19:00, at the Faculty of Education at USP. It is Between the Past and the Future , by the German thinker Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), which won a new edition by Editora Perspectiva, with a revised and updated translation by Mauro Barbosa. The event will be attended by professor from the Faculty of Law of USP Celso Lafer – who introduced the ideas of the German thinker in Brazil – and professor José Sérgio Fonseca de Carvalho, from the Faculty of Education at USP, specialist in Hannah Arendt. There will also be the online participation of Brazilian researchers who are dedicated to the study of Arendt’s thought.
With 400 pages, the new edition of Entre o Passado e o Futuro features a presentation by professor José Sérgio de Carvalho and, as a postscript, republishes a classic essay by Lafer on the German thinker, originally released in 1972.
In his presentation – entitled Uma Luz Que Emana do Portico de Jano – Carvalho explores the reasons for the title given by Arendt, Between Past and Future. “This willingness to situate oneself between the past and the future in order to weave exercises of thought reveals a theoretical-methodological perspective that marks Arendt’s work: launching herself into a continuous and endless exercise of understanding the present in the light of historical ruptures. , without being able to count on the categories inherited from tradition”, writes the professor. “It is, therefore, about reflecting on the political experience in its most recent configurations, trying to extract from them not only information and knowledge, but a meaning that allows us to continue living, thinking and acting in this world. In other words, understanding the present in its historicity implies assuming the responsibility of conceiving oneself as a being in the world and not just as a being in the world.”
For Professor Celso Lafer – who was a student of Hannah Arendt in the United States -, Between the Past and the Future is a great introduction to the author’s thinking. “It is, among Hannah Arendt’s books, the one in which the set of concerns simultaneously pulses from which this admirable representative of Weimar culture illuminates, to use one of her favorite expressions, the political reflection of the 20th century”, writes Lafer in the afterword. “It contains, practically, even if in a somewhat dispersed way, all the themes of her work. It is, therefore, an excellent and methodologically useful starting point for an attempt to interpret and organize her thinking.”
“A contemporary German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist, Arendt experienced the horrors of Nazi persecution, which forced her to flee, first to Paris, France, then to New York, United States, where she began to live and work”, highlights Editora Perspectiva, in a note published on its website. “It was this political phenomenon that motivated her research on totalitarianism and all her political thinking. Some of her main works are The Origins of Totalitarianism , Eichmann in Jerusalem , Between Past and Future and The Human Condition .”