Saturday, October 14, 2006

Conditions for political creativity

What can be said of institutional conditions for political creativity? A well functioning public sphere, education for democracy, an open and investigative culture etc.? Or a clearly oppressive society? Is it not true that creativity, political and otherwise, thrives on restrictions and duress?

1 Comments:

At 12:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Echoing Arendt's view on education, which must be conservative in order to foster a revolutionary potential in the new generation.
Her associated point should also be mentioned, that anyone who wants to deal with the new generation must assume responsibility for our common world, whether they approve of the state of things or not.

"[T]he educators here stand in a relation to the young as representatives of a world for which they must assume responsibility though they themselves did not make it, and even though they may, secretly or openly, wish it were other than it is. This responsibility [ … ] is implicit in the fact that the young are introduced by adults into a continuously changing world. Anyone who refuses to have joint responsibility for the world should not have children and must not be allowed to take part in educating them." (Arendt, Between Past and Future, 1977 p. 189).

 

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