Levinson

Professor Natasha Levinson (Kent State University) spoke about “Arendtian Futility and Education”:

Futility is one of Arendt’s favorite words. She values action and thought for their capacity to offset the futility of life but she also draws attention to the futility of action, which almost never accomplishes what was intended, and the futility of thinking, which, like Penelope’s web, “undoes every morning what it finished the night before.”  Clearly, futility has two different valences, each of which is instructive for thinking about education. My presentation brings Arendt’s conception of futility to bear on what we can expect education to do in and for the world. To anchor these ideas, I will draw on some recent educational scholarship that, while not directly engaging with Arendt, can nonetheless be said to embrace the futility of education in the Arendtian sense that I will try to lay out.

Natasha Levinson is Associate Professor for Cultural Foundations of Education at the Kent State University.