The Slow Boring of Hard Boards

Methodical Thinking and the Work of Politics

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3375366
AutoresMary G Dietz (University of Minnesota, autor de correspondencia)
Año1994
Volumen88
Número4
Páginas873-886
Fecha de publicación1994-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2082713
OpenAlexW2091148194
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas37

From the perspective of quite different theoretical traditions, Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt present nearly identical and equally powerful critiques of technological determinism in modernity. Yet unlike Arendt, Weil develops a concept of work that draws a distinction between technology and instrumental action as "methodical thinking." As a result, Weil's theory of action embraces something that Arendt's theatrical politics rejects-a concept of liberatory instrumentality, or purposeful performance. I shall reassess some of the inadequacies of Arendt's concept of work and develop Simone Weil's concept of methodical thinking in order to argue for a more neighborly affinity between work:interaction and purposeful:theatrical performance than Arendtian public realm theory, for all its power, currently allows. If such an affinity is possible, then public realm theory might be more adequately equipped to deliver on what I take to be its promise as an emancipatory project in late modernity

Action (physics · Determinism · Epistemology · Modernity · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Realm · Sociology · Technological determinism · Work (physics · Computer Science · Engineering · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics