Thursday, 24 April 2014
The fascinating life and work of the Hannah Arendt, political theorist and author of one of the twentieth century's most controversial philosophical ideas: ‘the banality of evil', will be the subject of a free public talk at The University of Western Australia next Tuesday 29 April.
The talk will be given by Associate Professor Ned Curthoys , who joined the discipline of English and Cultural Studies at UWA in January 2014.
Dr Curthoys' talk will particularly focus on how Arendt arrived at some of her more starting conclusions about evil while following the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a bureaucratic murderer whose ‘terrifying normality' encouraged Arendt to overturn a venerable, age old paradigm of thought which considered evil to be an monstrous and intentional disposition to do harm. Her seemingly audacious claim in her essay Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), that Eichmann, ‘didn't know what he was doing', generated one of the most bitter intellectual controversies of the twentieth century.
Dr Curthoys will suggest that despite Arendt's own subsequent empirical defence of her claims, where she insisted that she was only remarking what she observed of Eichmann, there were various elements in her life history and philosophical approach that encouraged her to reach this epochal revaluation of the nature of evil.
He will conclude by discussing the productive legacy of Arendt's idea in contemporary literature and film.
Prior to his appointment at UWA, Ned Curthoys was a research fellow in the School of Cultural Inquiry and an ARC post-doctoral fellow in the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, at the Australian National University.
His monograph The Legacy of Liberal Judaism: Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt's Hidden Conversation was published by Berghahn Books in September 2013.
WHAT: Public Talk - Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil: the story of the twentieth century's most controversial philosophical idea
WHEN: 6pm, Tuesday April 29, 2014
WHERE: Murdoch Lecture Theatre , Arts Building, UWA
COST: Free, but RSVP required. Register a seat online https://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/curthoys
Media references
Audrey Barton (UWA Institute of Advanced Studies) (+61 8) 6488 4797
Tags
- Channels
- Events
- Groups
- Institute of Advanced Studies