'Contemplating the Active Life: Hannah Arendt'

Friday, 5, Saturday, 6 and Sunday, 7 December 2025
Participation by prior registration.
Register here. “Amor Mundi - warum ist es so schwer, die Welt zu lieben?”
 “Love of the world—why is it so difficult to love the world?”
Hannah Arendt, Denktagebuch / Thinking Journal

2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Hannah Arendt, one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century and amongst the finest minds thinking and writing in the German language. Her example of inter-writing the life of action with the life of contemplation as a means to hold on to the human condition has truly stood the test of time.

In marking the occasion of Arendt’s 50th death anniversary, the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi, lays emphasis on the continuing liveliness of her ideas, not just for thinkers also for doers and makers, not just for the historical contexts of Germany or the United States of America (the two places where she lived and worked) but also for the rest of the world, and especially for India.

The commemoration takes the form of a 3-day long celebration of Arendt’s life and work, to highlight its continuing and renewed relevance, especially for artists, poets, philosophers, performers, and for all people who continue to try and love this troubled world, in difficult times.

The commemoration will feature words and silence, moments of discourse and moments of reflection, conversations and communications between words and bodies. There will be contributions made by philosophers, legal theorists, feminist activists, artists, poets and performers.

While artists and writers continue to offer testimonies of survival, dislocation and radical critique, it might be interesting to consider forms of expression that go beyond language. Following Arendt, we will argue, ‘Everything that is, must appear, and nothing can appear without a shape of its own’; accordingly, the three days of commemoration will feature a diversity of forms of shaping and appearance. The time of this gathering will not be exhausted by seminars in the academic mode. Instead, we will develop forms of interaction that are conversational and convivial, that make room for words as well as silences, for moments of discourse and for moments of reflection, for forms of communication between words and bodies that are as lexical as they are corporeal. There will be performances, picnics, walks, readings, smoking breaks (in honour of Arendt’s attachment to nicotine), recitations of poetry and other forms of embodied speech.

The commemoration will be woven together through events, gatherings, actions and conversations under the signs of justice, love, solidarity and statelessness and freedom. Each strand will feature a response to a particular phrase or fragment from Arendt’s words.

Through all the forms of discussion, the speakers, interlocutors and moderators will seek to provide a balance between contemplation and action, so that the audiences and the participants return from this commemoration with a sense of purpose born of reflection. The commemoration will not shy away from difficult questions, and at the same time, it will be mindful of Arendt’s sense of an adventurous, well lived life. It will be anything but boring. That is the best tribute we can hope to pay to Hannah Arendt.