The Slow Boring of Hard Boards

Methodical Thinking and the Work of Politics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3375366
AutoresMary G Dietz (University of Minnesota, autor correspondente)
Ano1994
Volume88
Fascículo4
Páginas873-886
Data de publicação1994-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2082713
OpenAlexW2091148194
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências 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