![]() ![]() Since these concepts were not created for such a purpose, epistemological mistakes can arise from their misuse. Nevertheless, these inspirational qualities should not foster an uncritical regurgitation or application of her concepts and quotations, which are sometimes taken from her texts without any appropriate context or discussion. A wonderful example is the work of the sociologist Richard Sennett, who has brilliantly described the conditions of late capitalist Western society inspired by the methodology of thinking without banisters, inherited from his professor, Hannah Arendt. Without a doubt, Hannah Arendt’s work possesses the capacity for inspiring further social science work. Concepts like these are the result of Hannah Arendt’s thinking “ohne Geländer” (“without banisters”), a sort of point of arrival of her work, but they are not analytical resources which can be applied to future research in exactly the same way as they were formulated. However, this was not their initial purpose. They are considered valuable analytical tools, directly applicable to the understanding of contemporary social phenomena. ![]() Hannah Arendt’s concepts of “action”, “natality” and the “banality of evil” are used extensively by social scientists (see for example, respectively, Gammeltoft, 2006, p. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |