Between Two Betweens: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Education

This article argues that Hannah Arendt provides an illuminating perspective on the “crisis” of education. The meaning and purpose of education, in Arendt’s view, its fundamental role in civilization, is to impart an old world to new beings, preparing children for “renewing a common world” by establishing an active bond to the past that does not just encumber but enables agency. Because her work does not cohere with either contemporary liberal or contemporary conservative criticisms or justifications of higher education, or with either moral or vocational promises about its merit, Arendt’s understanding of education appears less as a competing approach than as simply an eclipsed perspective. By focusing on the meanings and values of the public world we ineluctably inherit, Arendt’s reflections on education illuminate the temporal precarity intrinsic to the human condition.