Human Condition Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

Misanthropy Is Having a Moment

A self-help guide for pessimists

December 5, 2024 • by Alex Rossen

If you or someone you know is experiencing symptoms of a negative outlook on humanity, then David E. Cooper’s Pessimism, Quietism, and Nature as Refuge (Agenda Publishing, 2024) might be just the book for you. Cooper’s “negative judgement on the moral and spiritual failings of humankind” focuses readers’ attention on our ...

The One Who Writes Books

Eric Hoffer and the Perks of Being Self-taught

May 1, 2019 • by Marius Stan

We don’t know much about Hoffer’s first decades of life, up to his forties. The only available markers came through his voice only and they were full of inconsistencies. Many biographers have had difficulties with identifying the real pre-Longshoreman Philosopher Eric Hoffer (see Tom Bethell’s Eric Hoffer, Genius—And Enigma). He had ...

Envisaging the EU’s future with Hannah Arendt: Taking plurality seriously!

Arendt’s concept of humans as relational selves can transform the EU into a promising political object in a globalized era

September 4, 2018 • by Nicole Dewandre

A recent critical metaphor analysis of EU strategic policy documents of the period ranging from 1985 to 2014 has brought to light an oddity in how the European Commission speaks of businesses -- which are functional entities -- as if they were sensitive beings, but of people -- which are sensitive ...